The Demon and the Warrior
by moondusted
Summary: Shepard and Morinth and the complicated, twisted tightrope dance that is their relationship. Follows 'Desire' and 'In Flames'.
1. Idus Martii

_**Preface: **So it looks like the Shepard/Morinth pairing isn't going to go away anytime soon. I feel like spamming if I posted a separate story everytime I come up with a decent idea and besides, they are all more or less in the same continuity. So _The Demon and the Warrior_ (title may change, it's hopelessly clumsy) is a collection of one-shots and possibly mini-archs. _

_Both _Desire_ and _In Flames_ are technically part of this, but I've decided to leave them where they are. No need to mess things up more, right? _

_I'm making no promises on updates, I'll post when I have something. Don't expect everything to be as good as In Flames, either, as that one was a terribly lucky shot._

* * *

**_WARNING! _**The following one-shot is intended to take place after the events of **Lair of the Shadow Broker**. Therefore, there might be spoilers for the unwary. Read at your own risk.

**— Idus Martii —**

* * *

This is different. She has not seen Shepard like this before and the impression burrows itself underneath her skin to nestle and fester.

Her boots click, twice, three times before she stops, far enough into the room that the door slides closed behind her. The stars shift outside the window slowly, almost imperceptibly now that they have slowed in the approach of the relay. She likes watching them, imagines that sometimes she can see one suddenly wink out, the delayed farewell salvo of a sun that died infinitely long ago.

Today, however, her gaze passes over the view only briefly, incapable to hold her interest against the man now sitting on the bench in front of it. He has not moved when she entered, keeping perfectly still, as if it wasn't a legendary demon standing at his back now.

She has not seen him like this before and she can't even place it, not completely. His bare arms are spread out along the back of the bench, still glistening with a sheen of sweat, hand-wraps stark black against tan skin. Setting up a training ring in the cargo hold had been a good idea, giving the crew a chance to work out frustrations and stress before it reached a boiling point. Tension has been worse since coming away from the Collectors. It didn't feel like they had won anything, just bought themselves a little time in which to see and anticipate their ultimate fate. Shepard had called it 'in mostly turian tradition' with a quick wink at Garrus, who had chuckled back at it.

If he feels like talking, Garrus would be the obvious choice, Morinth thinks. There is a trust there Shepard shares with no one else on the crew, not even Miranda despite how she stays in the Captain's cabin every night.

For just wrestling with a krogan Shepard looks interestingly unmaimed. It comes hardly as a surprise, but there is a chance it may have something to do with it all.

She still can't place it, that sudden, odd sense of vulnerability she has from him. Strong muscled arms, slightly bruised but whole, the perfect arch of his neck from behind. He is looking out the window and into the past.

Morinth breaks into motion again, crosses forward and reaches around him, offering him the drink.

"Kasumi doesn't like me," she says.

Fingers brush her's when he takes the glass and the small contact sparks a little in her mind.

"Kasumi knows who you are," he replies calmly, almost boredly.

"I was careful," she counters. He either doesn't care or doesn't mind. He only shakes his head, puts the glass to his lips and drinks. Blue and red liquid swirl, refusing to mix, only verging into purple where they touch. She has mixed the cocktail to asari taste, odd to a human, too sweet and too bitter, but she thinks Shepard will appreciate the contrast.

He will reveal her to the crew, but the prospect doesn't daunt her. She has proved herself to them, there beyond Omega-4 and things changed for everyone.

Once - and Morinth can just see him - the Illusive Man hand-picked the members of this crew, for their skills, for their staunchness and - above everything else - the absoluteness of their loyalty to Cerberus. Thinking, certainly, how he will forever control them, pull their strings and use them to bring Shepard back to heel, should it have to come to this. And all those ties were severed, completely, when the Collectors attacked the Normandy. An old loyalty was erased, without a trace and a scar and a new one built in its place. After this, they all were Shepard's crew, body, mind and soul, for what he achieved in that no man's land, for bringing them all back home.

This new crew might be shocked with a revelation such as this, but all their alliances were chosen, irrevocably, and she already has her part in all of it.

She watches Shepard from the side, curls her legs up and folds them at her side, poised against the corner of the bench, cradling the cocktail in her hand. She hasn't tasted it yet, content to enjoy the anticipation for the time being. He doesn't return her gaze, stares out the window, drinks.

Indulging herself, she imagines herself sliding to the ground, uncoiling from her position, perfectly fluidly and smooth. She will let herself slide down, leaving the glass behind, and her perspective will shift with her new position. Hand in front of hand, she pictures herself prowl forward slowly, all the lethal grace, all the legendary power of her cursed race revealed in every move. She doesn't think Shepard will startle when she touches him, he will already have seen her, from the corner of his eye, senses alert for her, sharpened instincts wide awake. He will not move away, though, won't react at all at first. The material of his pants is durable and seamless for the sparring he has just come away from - thin enough that it drapes itself loosely along the lines of muscle and sinew on his legs.

She will move slowly, leisurely. Anticipation alone will make her skin prickle when she touches him, strokes her hand up his leg, letting it rest on his knee.

She will feel the tension through the thin fabric, muscles tightening under her palm as she glides her fingers up, rests them on top of his thighs and then stops for no more than a moment, lifting her gaze up, meeting his. His eyes are clear and dark at the same time, with sparks of demonic red burning in their depths. But there will be a different fire, new flames flaring up as his body responds under her hands. She will shift forward, close in between his legs as her hands slide further. Skin under her fingers now, the shirt easily brushed aside...

"Something on your mind?"

She moves her head a little, chuckles to herself and shakes her head. She puts the glass to her lips and takes a sip. "What brings you here?" she asks, watching him past the rim of her glass.

He arches his eyebrow. He can push the point. She doesn't doubt he can read in her face, see through her if he tries hard enough, but she doesn't expect him to. The moment isn't right and her impression of him still frazzles on the edges, seems off somehow, faded and pale in a way that has nothing to do with appearance.

"Your _irdani_?"

She laughs. "While I like to think I mix the best, I don't believe you. You are here because…" she lets it hang for a moment in deliberation, "…because of Liara."

He looks away from her, a tiny, involuntary movement and telling just because of it.

Liara's love for him is transparent, more obvious and more devastating the more she tries to hide behind work and duty. Now she can spent years hiding inside the Shadow Broker's archives without having to face him. There is a war coming and maybe Liara is right to be level-headed, to put survival first, but Liara is not so cold-blooded. No, Liara loves him with as much desperation as anyone ever felt. And living in these days, under these shadows, Liara understands that she can never have him.

Shepard himself is harder to read - now and always. Morinth isn't certain of his feelings, whether there is love or whether his mind is too complex, too intricate for something as simple as love.

"Liara," he repeats. She almost believes his incredulousness. Almost.

"There is something between you," Morinth observes. Idly, she traces her finger along the edge of the glass. It makes a sound, she is certain, but both their ears are not sensitive enough to hear it.

"Liara is a friend."

"You are alive today because of her."

It was Shepard's turn to chuckle, but he doesn't answer.

"You love her," she continues, she doesn't make it sound like the challenge it could be.

He jerks his head back, choking back a caustic laugh, than looks at her sharply. "It's all going down, Morinth." He hisses her name, long-drawn snarl, she can easily imagine it in some other situation, slithering along silken sheets.

"The whole shit," he continues. "Nothing I did makes a damn difference. Liara bringing me back from the dead? Pointless. Might as well have left me for the Collectors, it'd be good to be on the winning side for a change."

Growling, he sat forward, stared at the half-empty glass in his hand. "Saren was right. We can't win this."

Carefully, she dips her voice low, letting it waver with the air. "Rachni, krogan, geth."

He looks at her sharply, but once more he says nothing.

"Not one but two powerful asari," she adds.

"Saren's army," he concludes and she thinks she detects a hint of bitterness there.

"But Saren wanted that army to bow to the Reapers," Morinth says. She thinks she would have liked to meet Saren in those days before he was blinded and then bested. She corrects herself, "Saren wanted that army to force _everyone_ to bow to the Reapers."

A slow smirk crawls onto his features, then and maybe he can really read her mind. He says, "A pity you and Saren didn't cross paths. Would have saved us all a shitload of trouble."

She shakes her head, smiles at the thought and finally puts her own glass to her lips to drink. The _irdani_ slides down her throat, liquid starlight, cold and merciless and perfect, like the colours that shift in the glass, to perfect to let themselves be soiled. "If I had killed Saren in some chance encounter, what warning would we have had?"

He shrugs, downs the rest of the drink. She does still not know why he has come here.

"We are all dead," he says as he turns to look back at her. "I cannot unite this galaxy against the Reapers. They will fight me like I fought Saren. And sooner or later, they will find someone who takes me down, _like I did with Saren."_

The thought seems ludicrous for a long moment, spinning delicately between them. She tries to picture it, in her head, tries to evoke some distant feeling to go with it. He has a point, she supposes, from where he stands. Saren was a legend, the greatest of all the Spectres.

Worthy, perhaps, even of being brought back from the dead, had his goals been different.

And the galaxy is too large to comprehend, to anticipate how genetic chance will play on that scale. It brought two great people into existence already and then fate pitted them against each other, leaving only one to walk away alive. Shepard knows that story, has played it and been the one to walk away. There is always a chance it will be his turn next time, beaten and broken by another young pretender. Ultimately, all worlds move in cycles.

"So?" Morinth prompts.

He shakes his head once more. "I'm just saying. Don't get your hopes up for an after-victory celebration. In the end, we'll die on our knees. But I'll make it as bloody as I can before that."

Morinth feels like smiling. The sudden savagery of his tone feels almost like a touch and she wants to purr. "You make the best promises, Shepard."

He smiles at her, teeth bare and eyes cold. He gets up in one smooth movement, turns and walks to the door.

She calls him —quietly — by his first name and he stops, as if frozen by her voice, half a breath away from where the door's sensors would pick him up and part for him.

He does not look back and his voice is low. "No one calls me that."

Morinth gives her glass a little shake, so the ice jingles against the glass. "Not even Miranda?"

He tilts his head back. She cannot see his face, but she thinks he might be amused. He says, "_Especially_ not Miranda."

He waits, Morinth lets the seconds tickle away in silence, waiting until it crushes either of them, but there is an odd sense of comfort now. He trusts her, enough to reveal himself as he has just done. The truth feels hard and remorseless now, once evoked it cannot be put to rest, there, in his own words, the cold, calculated assessment of their situation and the probability of his failure.

She breathes in. She says, "Shepard…" but he lifts his hand and she stops.

He glances at her over his shoulder, frosty eyes and gleaming scars.

He says, "He is a dreamer; let us leave him. Pass."

He steps forward and the doors open for him, sounds from the corridor flood into the room like the tide, surge and break against him. He walks away and the door hisses closed behind him.

* * *

**End of _Idus Martii_**

* * *

_Notes:_

Idus Martii (The Ides of March), the day Julius Caesar was killed.

"He is a dreamer; let us leave him. Pass." - from Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. Caesar dismisses the warning of the soothsayer. We know how well that worked for him...


	2. History of My Death

_**WARNING**: Takes places (largely) during the endgame fight, therefore, mind the **spoilers**!_

* * *

**— HISTORY OF MY DEATH —  
**

* * *

Among all species in the galaxy, it is a common enough believe: In the moment of your death, all your life will flash before your inner eye.

For her part, Morinth has always entertained the thought that her lovers were too caught up in the pleasure-pain of _how _they were dying, too lost even to process such memories. It has always seemed an odd thing to her, this idea. What use would it be? Knowing like that everything you are about to lose, reviewing all the dreams you will never live?

But now the ground shudders beneath her and she can feel her balance shatter as the platform suddenly dips to the side and her feet lose touch with it. Instinctively, her biotics flare up, but she is too drained to do much more than reconnect herself to the ground and it has become slippery. She falls, slides and slithers as pieces of the dead Reaper rain all around her. Frantically, her fingers scrabble for purchase on the smooth surface, but she finds none — already knows she won't, she knows the scent and the rhythm of death.

For a moment, one foot touches something hard and she slows done, and this more than anything else, makes her heart hitch and the breath catch in her throat. She is not afraid of dying, but the thought of _living, _now that is the true desire.

Shepard calls her mother's name and she fails to comprehend. Later, so much later, when she finds she is still alive, she can marvel at how he could have kept his head like that, keeping the act in place to the very end. Shepard, she learns, never plays to a lost cause.

He dives after her and the edge comes up to meet them.

...

_The examination room was warmly coloured, comfortably lit, but Morinth still felt cold in her thin robe. She sat on the edge of the bed, skinny legs dangling down, still moving back and forth as if caught in an unseen breeze. She felt fine that day, perfectly healthy and ready to take on the universe. A maiden now, everything around her seemed to shimmer and jingle invitingly. Hers for the taking, now. _

_And something was wrong. She didn't understand it right then. The doctor's voice drifted to her from across the room, a low, inaudible croon. She could read her mother's stance well enough however, had seen it often enough. Samara had gone still, stiff like a statue in her regal, imposing beauty and her large eyes were wide and secretive. _

_Morinth barely remembered the conversation she had had with her later, still in the same lovely room. What she _did _remember was how her own mother had been incapable to even take her into her arms when she told her how her life was over before it had even began. _

...

Shepard's hand snaps closed around her wrist, hard enough to crush the hardsuit around her and Morinth feels her bones give way with the force. She feels the pain shoot up her arm, spiking into her head and driving down her spine. She dips over the edge and her body smashes against the platform when Shepard manages to break her fall.

She stares up at his face, tries to read in it. A shard has left a cut across his forehead and blood runs down the side of his face. It looks rather like warpaint to match the bared teeth and the bright, brilliant feral glow of his eyes. If she is to die, if she shall walk the Abyss with all her sins, she shall take this image with her gladly.

...

_She played Dhaijama with her sisters every afternoon, with the sunlight streaming through the wide window, shifting the air into golden sparkles. Outside the house, a lush valley stretched into the distance. It was peaceful here, quiet. One of the few remote spot remaining on Thessia. There was a monastery in the next valley, but of course none of them would ever go there. _

_Weeks pass, then months, then years. It had become difficult to keep track of the passage of time. The Extranet offered little distraction when everything it showed, everything it told her had no more substance than a fairy tale image seen through a mirror. She could reach out and touch the surface, but she could never step through. _

_After a while, none of her sisters were able to beat her any longer. Morinth stopped playing after that. _

...

Shepard mutters a smattering of curses, tightens his hold and for a moment everything seems to go still, life and time hanging in balance and then Shepard jerks his arm, pulls her up and tosses her back on the ground. Morinth flounders, helplessly. Across from her, she sees Garrus flay his arms in a desperate attempt to stay on his own feet. She tries to breath, to steady herself, but the platform suddenly reverses its spin, turns and falls the other way.

...

_She had prepared for this moment for a long time. Samara comes to visit regularly, wrapped in duty and dignity, it was so disgusting that Morinth could barely suppress the retching. No words of consolation, not a hint of pity or mercy. Samara felt no compassion and because of that, neither would Morinth. _

_Walking out of her own bedroom in her mother's clothes was the hardest thing she had ever done. She felt naked, exposed, as transparent as the glass against the brilliant sunlight. _

_Her sisters never saw, Samara's bodyguards didn't become suspicious until they were well away from the house in the valley and by then, Morinth already had a gun to their heads. _

...

She has fallen again, doesn't get up again, simply clings to the spinning, dancing platform as it tries to shake her off. She can see the blue of Garrus' hardsuit from the corner of her eye, shaking like leaves in the storm, blurring the colour. She has no idea how far down it is, but she thinks she will find out soon enough. Pieces of metal begin raining around her, screeching in her head as they collide with the platform.

She falls, again, and pain explodes against her head. She clings to consciousness for a long moment, watching as her vision dips sideways and washes out. Then, there is only darkness.

...

_She lost her virginity to a krogan merc. In later years, she might have scoffed at him, but then the raw strength of this imposing creature attracted her without any hope of resisting. She picked him out and intended to take him home, to the small hotel room she had rented with stolen money, but they never got there. She lured him, in the taxi, drove him past self-control and the car lurched to the side before the auto-controls took over. _

_The krogan is huge and rough, but her asari body adapts and among the two of them, she is the greater beast. _

_It's like falling and flying at the same time. Like walking in a storm of lightning, hand in hand with death. The power is overwhelming, pure bliss of her lover's incomprehensible pain and above all else, the absoluteness of her own freedom. _

...

She hurts. Maybe pain is good, because it means she is still alive. Maybe, however, it only means she is dying slower than she had hoped in payback of all the suffering she has inflicted.

There is pressure across her torso, making it hard to breath and dulling the beat of her struggling hard.

Daring the pain, she moves or tries to and there it is, white hot and crushing racing through her veins. But a moment later, the pressure vanishes suddenly, leaving a different, dull, throbbing behind.

A hand is placed on her shoulder, hard enough to steady her against the onslaught, anchoring her on this side of consciousness.

"Morinth," Shepard says.

It's not her name, after all, not originally, but from him, it sounds like it must be. She opens her eyes in time to see a quick, savage grin cross Shepard's face. He straightens, dragging her to her feet with him, heedless of whatever wounds she has sustained. There is no time now. He holds her for a moment, until she regains a semblance of steadiness, then lets go of her.

A few feet away, Garrus is struggling to his feet and Morinth thinks he looks just as battered as she feels.

Shepard turns, looks them both over, then nods.

"We need to get outta here," he says. He doesn't ask them if they can make it, because in the end, it makes no difference.

...

_She was demon, taking life and giving death at will and fancy._

_She was a goddess, presiding over her subjects and revelling in the glory of it. _

_She could have stayed in this place for all eternity and would never have tired of it. For the first time, she had everything she wanted and everything she deserved. She is above everyone else in the galaxy, beautiful and terrible and she is accorded all the respect and awe it entailed. _

_They brought her sacrifices and watched in adoration as she devoured them and trembled when she rejected them. _

_Life, she often thought, was meant to be like this. _

...

Shepard hangs back, she can tell. Less hurt then either of them, it would be easy for him to outpace them. He isn't the man for heroic sacrifices, Morinth knows, has seen the will to live burn brighter than anything else in his mind, but there is something else at play her. He hangs back, a distraction to their pursuers, simply because he is the most skilled and that gives them _all _the best odds.

The collector base seems to fight them, jumbling the platforms around, making every step treacherous and there is no time to be careful. The collectors press them hard and she hears Shepard cursing as he runs out of thermal clips. Garrus whirls, barks Shepard's name and tosses him his shotgun when Shepard reacts.

She can see the escape, can see the opening even if the red light makes it look like the gate of hell.

The Normandy appears, dreamt of, prophesied, in a moment destined be told and retold in the millennia to come. She leaps, blinds, with all the strength she can still muster, biotics flare to hold her across the distance. Only a step behind her Garrus does the same, but the platform has been falling away under him and he is falling behind, jumped too short.

Instinctively, Morinth reaches for him, knows she lacks the strength and does it anyway. She pulls them both up on the landing behind Joker.

She feels like fainting, but it is not yet time.

Shepard could never make it, the gap is too wide now. The Normandy shudders sideways, carefully, and Morinth knows the ship cannot get any closer like this at all.

There is no hesitation in Shepard, anger perhaps, tinged with desperation but no hint of fear.

He manages to grip the edge with his fingertips, holds himself against the ship as she begins to draw away.

Morinth lunges forward, reaches for Shepard with both her hands and the pain suddenly washes over her with nauseating force. He has broken her wrist earlier, a wound forgotten and dulled with the rush of adrenaline and survival instinct.

"Serves you right," she growls, but pulls him up anyway. She falls back against the closed door behind her, halfway crushing herself under his weight. Shepard goes limp against her for less than a second, strength bled, his head resting against her shoulder.

Despite everything, she thinks she likes him there.

He squares his shoulders and moves away.

"We aren't out of it yet," he says.

"Just you wait," Joker grins.

...

_Omega was like an old whore. Sagging and decrepit, jaded beyond imagining with everything she has seen and done. But she promises the impossible and you believed her because you could see she knew what she is talking about. _

_Coming to Omega feels like visiting an old friend. Not someone you liked, particularly, but someone you knew appreciated the tales you brought, someone who had moved beyond disgust a long time ago. _

_There is a certain symmetry in that it should be Omega that delivered her to her destiny. _

...

Shepard sits on the empty bed beside her. Med-bay is quiet around them and he pitches his voice low.

"If you tell Chakwas about you, she'll keep it secret," he says. "You were hurt bad, she'd probably figure it out anyway."

"You broke my wrist," she says.

"Do you mind?" he asks, arching his brows.

"Not so much, no."

Before this, Shepard had told her they were walking into almost certain death. And now, still alive against all odds, she realises that she had made her peace with it. She would have taken death in this way, she could have accepted it.

She looks at Shepard. Maybe it's the light, she thinks, but Shepard seems older now than he did a day ago.

"You should have kept the base," she says. "You destroyed the Collectors, what's to stop you from destroying Cerberus?"

He shakes his head, slowly. "The Reapers _want _us to use their tech. That's what fucked over the protheans and whatever civilisations came before. Maybe we could have used the base, yeah, or it would have turned us all into husks. Not a risk I'm willing to take."

She relaxes back into the bed. It's soft underneath her. She has never understood the fascination with safety, but in this moment, she at least isn't bothered by it.

"What happens now?"

He gets up from the bed, turns to go. "We've won two battles," he shrugs. "But the war was still on."

...

_Shepard was like a vision. In the end, she could do nothing but fall at his feet.

* * *

_

**End of _History of My Death_**_  
_

* * *

**Author's Note: **Somewhat unrelated but since dropping that line in the last part about the Council sending someone after Shepard in the same way he was sent after Saren, wouldn't it be extremely cool it that were a batarian spectre? Just to keep with the symmetry, really. Saren wasn't particularly fond of humans, after all, and this Shepard _is_ the Butcher of Torfan. Just a thought (because I want ME 3 _now_).

I'm not so sure with the editing in this part. ff screws with the layout, that's why I added the dots between the parts, but it looks like a bit too much. Not sure what to do, though. Suggestions welcome!

Anyway, hope you enjoy this part!


	3. Foreplay, Part I

**Warning: **Smutty slash! I needed the goddamned porn out of my system. Besides, I did a couple of personality tests for my Shep (yeah, I have no life, so what else is new?) and he scored 1.82 in the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid, much to my surprise, because I thought he was pretty much perfectly straight. Ah well. Flexible is good.

**Author's Note: **This is meant to be in two parts. The actual sex (everything after this, that is) will happen in between. We've all read these stories before, there is little new I have to add. Therefore, part 2 will cut straight to the pillow talk.

**Time: **This takes place sometime after "In Flames".

* * *

_**—**_** Foreplay, Part I —**

* * *

Secretly, Morinth wants Shepard bathed in sunlight and wrapped in golden rays. She recalls him mentioning Virmire and its famed beauty and she thinks maybe she shall never have him that way. It's a small sorrow, though, right here and now. She doesn't mind the cold, clinical light, the tinges of blue it edges across everything and the unforgiving white of its main focus. It's a spotlight, sharp and defined, belonging on a stage.

She has never thought they might ever reach this place, even if she has perhaps pictured it in her head in vivid colours a handful of times, only to find that, of course, whatever imagination she has harboured, they can never possibly compare. Shepard has surprised her again.

Clay is a find. A professional conman, a survivor and libertine who has grown bored and jaded in a life that has thrown him few challenges. He is as tall as Shepard, long-limbed and sable-skinned. Earlier, she has watched him as he wound his way through an art exhibit on the prowl for some new game or other, delicious to observe this other predator as he hunted.

Clay. She can sense it's not his real name, feels like plucking the truth of it from his mind later, but for now she tries to settle in her seat, letting the quiet thrumming of music wash over her and enjoy the performance.

He has his fingers tangled in Shepard's collar, yanking, only to let go to try and find purchase in the commander's too short hair, dragging him down into a hard kiss. It doesn't last and Shepard pushes himself up, breaks the grip easily and stares down at Clay for a long moment. He draws back, his shirt hangs open, it obscures her view and drags over Clay's chest as Shepard moves.

Morinth takes another sip and the fierce liquid travels down her throat with a sense of premonition or wishful thinking but Shepard doesn't look like he is going to disappoint her tonight. She leans to her side, folds her legs up on her seat and feels her weight sink into the plush.

Clay is cheap, in his way, careless of the atmosphere, grumbling some obscenity or other as he pushes himself up on his elbows. In all honesty, though, and a measure of amusement, Morinth will confess that she has never, in all her centuries, seen anyone undress as quickly as Clay has done mere minutes before.

Of course, the dynamics of it are half the appeal. By its very nature - and perhaps by _her _very nature - Sex is _always_ a game of power. Its stakes dealing strength and submission, endurance and experience. It is a contest of wills and bodies where only the ruthless walk away. It is always the same game, but when the weapons are even, it has to be played differently; similar, Morinth thinks, to when two asari find each other.

Shepard sits back between Clay's splayed legs and shrugs the shirt from his shoulders unceremoniously. The stark white of the material billows around his waist until he pulls it completely free and discards it carelessly somewhere, outside the cone of light, where the reflection is lost in the shadows of the room.

What pleasure it must have been for Miranda, Morinth thinks and there is a measure of envy. For two years Miranda did nothing but repaint the this masterpiece. For two years, he belonged only to her alone, when she set bones beneath flesh, beneath muscle, beneath skin until every atom in every cell was in exactly the right place, harmoniously in perfect accord with all others, shaping a mangled corpse back into the war-god image.

In the vacuum left by surviving the suicide mission, Shepard finds the time to finally get the cybernetic scars treated and now they only show as very faint lines across his face and a handful of tiny fissures along his arms and torso. They will be completely healed soon and even the dark glow of his eyes will have vanished. Morinth hasn't decided yet what she makes of that.

Clay gives an appreciative whistle and Shepard tilts his head. A smile crosses his face for the briefest of moments. He turns to glance at Morinth and the smile becomes a sneer before it vanishes. Shepard leans back down and forward, above Clay, hands dragging mercilessly across his chest and Clay gasps. Expecting another kiss that never comes. Instead, Shepard presses his cheek against Clay's and whispers something into his ear that Morinth is too far away to hear. Clay's voice rises briefly in what might be protest or an exclamation of something else entirely. Clay drops his hands away from Shepard's neck and head, tangles them in the sheets for something to hold on to.

Morinth tracks Shepard's movements with her gaze, the play of cruel light on skin and the way it shifts with the quick, hard caresses he gives. Sometimes, just barely, she sees the faintest hint of hesitation, as if he has to feel his way in the dark, along pathways that are not - not quite - perfectly familiar to him.

Already half-way lost, Clay never notices. And Morinth only does because she is so ensnared - and has been from the moment she has first seen Shepard - by the symphony of his movements, the languid warrior-grace and all the smooth strength of his body. Clay only moans and arches into the touches.

Shepard wastes no time and she knows the feeling. Sometimes, the need, the hunger burns so hot in her she can feel the layers of civilisation peel away from her, useless masks acquired through millennia and discarded in moments and without sorrow.

Clay raises his hips sharply when Shepard's hands stop and settle there with deft, strong fingers and quick strokes. It takes a long moment for Clay to realise that Shepard has stopped doing anything at all, just holds him there. Clay looks down from glazed eyes, drags his knees up for better purchase on the slippery blanket.

Sinews twitch on Shepard's arms as he first shifts, then tightens his grip. He gives a few more, long strokes, but Clay is more than ready, doesn't need it, growls and lifts his hips demandingly. Shepard moves his hands again, pushes Clay back into the bed and holds him pinned like an insect, but does, in the end, relent. He bends his head, waits for another agonisingly long second and then, finally, takes Clay in his mouth. Only to stop once more, almost immediately, with just the tip inside.

Morinth jitters to the edge of her seat, acutely aware of the cool drops of condensation from her glass running down her wrist. She doesn't mind the light anymore, its unforgiving glare edges Shepard's face as if in expensive marble, the stretch along his jaw, the hollow of his cheeks.

"Fuck dammit!" Clay gasps and Morinth doesn't quite know whether its an encouragement of any kind. It does, however, sound utterly sincere. She can almost see the vibration from Shepard's mouth when he chuckles, sees it travel up the other man's body. Clay whimper, shoulders tense and his head drops back as if its strings were snapped. He bucks his hips, or at least tries to. Shepard's grip is too strong, but there is something mesmerising in the ripple of his body.

Muscles strain along the side of Shepard's neck and he turns his head just slightly to the side, just enough so he can catch and hold Morinth's gaze. His jaw moves a fraction and he peels his lips back from his teeth.

She does not remember when she has forgotten how to breath, only feels the lack of oxygen prickle along her skin. She is wrapped in vertigo, falling back into herself, a supernova reversal and the universe shrinks down around them, as if there is nothing there but the two of them and the deliberate, controlled ferocity of what they do.

Clay pants heavily. The teeth do not touch him, Morinth can tell - can almost sense it, wishes desperately to somehow share in it - but Clay knows, primally, feels it in the way Shepard has stopped moving, taunting and cruel. Tiny shudders run through Clay, trying to stay as still as possible against the threat, but Morinth is still held in Shepard's gaze, the hellfire sparkling there and for a moment she barely copes with the utter fortune of having found him. Shepard's cheek hollow slightly more, opening his mouth wider and Clay's groan hitches in suspicious relief only to stutter and die overcome with sensation. Invisible to her eyes, but she has an idea now, of what to think and she can read people in the throes of passion.

Shepard takes his heavy gaze away from Morinth and purses his damp lips, lets his eyes flutter closed and sinks down all the way, in one go.

There is a short, sharp cough, rattling in his throat as it protests and he draws back, breathes, and down. His throat adapts, she sees him swallow around him and Clay moans.

She cannot sit back and watch. Maybe she has always known it would end like this, maybe she has lied to herself and only Shepard always knew everything. She doesn't care. She leaves her glass behind, with its paltry imitation of heat and strides across the room, that empty, powerless space separating them.

She finds her seat, strokes her hands down Clay's face. He doesn't much care for her, she knows, has only agreed to come with her because she left him no choice, because she could promise him, well, _this. _But now he leans into her caress willingly. She strokes her hands down his chest, nails tearing deep as she goes. She cannot help the tiny flashes of blue stinging him, but this close she can see the way his heart beats harder and his breathing jumps.

It should be a submissive pose for Shepard, like this, servicing another and it is an appealing thought, if only because it makes the underlying power shine even brighter. And yet, this is not the place, the time, for such. Shepard has moved his hands, released the hard grip and given Clay limited freedom to move. One hand is still splayed against Clay's skin, between the jutting edges of hipbones, guiding him. From this perspective, Morinth cannot make out Shepard's other hand, but doesn't need to.

She reaches down, along the smooth muscles of Clay's arm to where his fingers clench and unclench in the blanket, nearly tearing it, knuckles standing out pale and hard. He shivers as she slides her fingers across them and it feels like there is no skin at all, just bone under her touch. She strokes, coaxes until Clay's grip loosens and she can lace her own fingers with his and he clamps around her, holds her in a subconscious vice.

Clay doesn't belong to her and she has no right to kill him, but if she is careful, she can share in this more than she has originally planned. Clay's mind is wide open, gaping, all its defences sundered long since. Sensation washes wildly through him, scattering his thoughts. Tendrils of her self slither through his mind, subtle and careful, trying hard not to connect too closely. The lure is there, to take him for herself, but she restrains herself. All she wants is a whisper of a taste, the promise of what she cannot have, from neither man.

Morinth watches Clay's face below her, leans down and breathes a kiss across his lips, then trails her other hand down his chest, has to stretch herself to get further, feels his pants against her throat and hears his muttering. She reaches down until her fingertips touch Shepard's and electricity sparks from the tiny contact.

Clay has found his rhythm, speeds it up now into hard, quick stabs as far as Shepard will let him. Morinth closes her eyes and for a moment she can feel them both. Feels her throat close with sudden obstruction, alien tissue against her tongue and feels her mind fall to pieces against heat-pressure-suction. She is in too deep, can't turn back now and the flare rushes toward her with meteorite force, taking all of them down. But Clay snaps before she does, with his heart beating so fast she can feel it through his skin against her breast. His scream is breathless, soundless, echoing into dimension mortals cannot hear, head buried back into the pillows, neck strained and throat exposed.

Her connection unravels and she snatches her hand away from Shepard, drags it back to leave Clay what room he needs as he shudders. She pants almost as much as he does, her vision distorted through black eyes when everything is in sharper focus and all her senses are acutely, painfully aware of her surrounding. The very air slices her to shreds.

For no more than an instant, Shepard startles back, furrows his brows and tightens his grip, almost pushing Clay away. It doesn't last. Morinth can see the tension leave his shoulders as quickly as it has come. He breaths sharply through his nose and Morinth tilts her head for a different angle, just in time to watch his throat contract as he swallows.

"Shit," Clay declares breathlessly. Tension bleeds from him, falls away like water, but it takes a little until he remembers to open his hands from the blanket and to release Morinth from his death-grip. He flutters a quick glance at her, smiles a little, then pushes himself up and rests his head on her thigh.

Shepard sits back on his heels. He looks merely faintly amused for all the way his lips are swollen and glistening. His eyes sparkle.

Morinth says, "Your pants must be getting tight."

Clay chuckles.

Shepard uncoils from between Clay's legs and regains his feet smoothly. He walks along the bed in two long strides and bends over Morinth, cups her face with one hand and kisses her against Clay's heated gaze, knowing it is his taste they share.

In the moment before he touches her, Morinth feels a growl at the back of her mind. Shepard always seems to do that to her, obscuring his scent and his taste. There is always something that is not quite part of him. Smoke and alcohol in his mouth, blood and soap and gunmetal on his skin. It's never just _him_, never gives her an angle, a hook for her to hold. She can't hold him like this, can't bruise him, when he keeps eluding her. And as always, he breaks away from her too easily, lets go of her face and her lips and takes a step back.

For once, she doesn't mind. Shepard gets rid of his boots and pants with graceless, military trained movements. There is no room for titillation on a battlefield and for all its silk draping, this isn't so much different.

Morinth purrs when he is done, but it's Clay who says, "I knew you'd be good at his," and whistles again.

Shepard pays him no attention, watches Morinth's face instead.

"I'm not buying you are impressed," he says. "You had krogan lovers, Morinth."

She laughs, loves him for the self-deprecating comment and the confidently relaxed posture to go with it, most of all, though, she thinks she loves the slow, lazy way he strokes himself.

He turns his attention back to Clay. "Were you just calling me cocksucker?"

It's Morinth who gives him away, when Clay seems uncertain whether the words were in jest or not. She fails to suppress another chuckle and as close as he is, Clay picks it up. He opens his mouth, but Shepard silences him with a shake of his head.

The commander walks back to the bed.

He says, "Not the point, friend. It's just that I'm _one hell of_ whatever I do." He catches Morinth's gaze, holds it, then lets it fall away in the cruel light.

"And you haven't seen anything yet."

No, he is not going to disappoint her tonight, Morinth thinks.

* * *

**End of _Foreplay, Part I_**


	4. Afterglow, Part II

_Edit: _I forgot this and it's a bit too cryptic to just leave it. When Shepard says "I'm goddess-born" he is referencing both his first name and Virgil's The Aeneid.

**

* * *

**

— Afterglow, Part II —

* * *

The artificial lights dimmed when the slow spread of dawn as it crawls past the wide windows in thin tendril of pale grey and pink. It would still take hours until the sun climbed high enough over the eternal cold that plastered the mountainside, broken by the harder white of the port buildings set in terraces along the slope.

Clay has fallen asleep, sprawled at the foot of the bed, a blanket drawn sloppily across his face and upper body while everything else is freely on display. Morinth watches him breath in sleep, slow and rhythmic again now, only to turn her attention away from him.

Shepard is not asleep, even though he has not moved in a while.

Bare-feet, Morinth walks back to the bed.

"Do you never sleep?" she asks.

Shepard glances her way, just briefly, then fixes his gaze again on the frozen, deadly beauty slowly being revealed outside his window. "I'm goddess-born. I don't sleep."

She chuckles, puts her hands on the bed and slides up, like an oversized pet and crosses her legs under her to sit relaxed. She breathes in deeply. Ventilation has long since let the smoke dissipate, but she wonders whether he would relinquish another of his precious cigarettes. The brand is hard to come by, even here. He is attached to the tiny destructiveness of the Tuchanka tobacco, enamoured for all he is, with the idea of defeat, of giving in, of giving up.

"I believe you," she says. "Even if I know that Chakwas wants to treat your insomnia."

"I have no time," he says back and she believes that, too, feels it when she is close enough to him. He has died once already, with everything nearly coming undone with it, the galaxy unravelling with that one man. It is beating at him, always, that knowledge of mortality, the unbreakable promise and the utter certainty of it.

It costs you, every time you risk your life. Morinth has seen into many hearts and knows, no matter how brave, there is a moment, tiny, minuscule but there, when you hesitate, when you _fear. _When you want to turn and run and hide, like your ancestors did, on whatever world they writhed. How much worse would it be for someone who knows? Someone who might have seen - as Morinth always suspects - that there is nothing on the other side.

There is the remnant of a tattoo on Shepard's right hip. Most of it is gone, jagged edges and colours changed with heat as testament to the forces that had destroyed it. Yet, the skin is perfectly smooth. She begins to reach out, wanting to trace those lines, those oddest of scars. Instead, her hand hovers in the air, as if she worries her touch would destroy it further.

Shepard catches her wrist in a surprising light touch. "I had another," he says slowly. It no longer startles her when he can follow her train of thought like this. It still sends a tiny shiver down her spine, imagining a connection going so much deeper than anything they cannot have.

"On my shoulder," he ads. "Joining the Alliance looked like a dumb decision right after I'd made it. I needed something to express it."

She folds her hand around his, tucks it along like a stolen treasure to rest in her lap. "You could have them redone."

"I'm no longer that man," he says and there is something like wistfulness in his voice.

"You are more now," she says, because she suspects it's the last thing he wants to hear. Indeed, he lets go of her abruptly, curls his hand behind his neck and slides down a little on the bed, staring at the ceiling rather than the window. A snowstorm has chased away what might have been a sunrise, filled the light with snowy gloom.

Clay stirs, rolls to his side and returns to his sleep.

"He should be dead," Morinth observes. "He'll sell this story to the highest bidder."

"One more trifle published about me," he counters and she feels the slight vibration of his shrug travel through the bed. "There'll always be someone who makes up stories and there'll always be someone who believes them. Why should I care?"

All her life, for all her flamboyance, she has been used to secrecy. A necessity in the name of survival and she has never really questioned it. She leaves her traces, of course, intentionally and not, but she has always been subtle about it. Shepard is faster in judging, quicker to dismiss a threat or to disregard a warning. He does not play safe, nor does he have to. If he hides at all, it is behind noise and blinding light, playing the thug for the public just because it suits him. One more piece of juicy gossip, whether true or not, won't matter to him.

Morinth broke her stillness, unfolds her legs and swings around - the smooth silk under her permitting the movement - and lies down to rest her head on the unyielding plane of his stomach. She reaches out once more and this time she puts her fingertips to the frayed edges of colour, but she doesn't linger. She ghosts her hands over the skin in front of her, the lightest of touches, just just enough to remind them both of where they were and with whom. Not enough to challenge him, not nearly enough to arouse.

"I could take Biotixin," she says so casually, a less perceptive man might miss the impact of it altogether.

"A biotic inhibitor?"

"We could be together then."

It's the greatest concession she is capable of making. In centuries, there has only been a select few times when she even entertained the thought - and dismissed it again immediately. Until now.

"Why?" he asks and she almost believes he is truly incredulous.

"Because I love you and I don't want to kill you."

He laughs, low in his throat. "What happened to 'you are so special, of course you'll survive it'?"

So maybe in the beginning it was just a clever lie, meant to ensnare him and bend him to her will. Only so it could become something else, later. The lie she desperately wanted to be the truth, against all odds.

"I don't think I ever believed that," she says and the honesty tastes strange all over again.

"Just try to image where we'd be if you'd been more convincing."

She feels herself go still and as she does, she can hear his heart beating not far from her ear. She cannot stop the tension from bleeding from her, can't stop him from noticing and he laughs again.

"I never bought it, Morinth," he says, as if explaining a joke that had always been on her. "I know I'm good, I'm just not _special." _

She pushes her hand down and it is half in revenge and half in want, drags her fingers back in a hard caress and imagines the rush of blood in his body. She says, "Biotixin is expensive, but you have connections."

"What's in it for you?" he asks. Of course he has been with asari before. He knows physical contact is the least important factor for asari sexuality, so much so it's nearly inconsequential when it is their minds that offer the true intimacy.

"We can be together then," she reiterates.

"We are together now," he points out. Morinth strokes her hand across him again, curls her nails into the tiny fissure of glowing red, holding him in place as if she fears him fading from her grasp.

"I want to feel you," she says. "Really feel you. Like Miranda does, or Liara, or Jack. Just because I'll be locked inside my own mind doesn't mean I couldn't feel you inside me."

When he makes no response, she unhooks her nails from his skin and sighs as she rolls to her back. She cannot tell whether he is considering what she has said, whether she has send his mind elsewhere, to those other women. It does not occur to her that maybe he might prefer to be with either of them than with her.

"The dosage would knock you out," Shepard says. "Or near enough."

It is her turn to chuckle. "I'm sure people have sacrificed more for you than that."

"Not in the bedroom, they haven't." He moves again and a moment later his hand traces along her shoulder, down the side of her breast. "Let me change the question," he says. "What's in it for me? You'll be semiconscious, if you get lucky, so how is that more satisfying than using my own hand?"

"Is that a moral question?" she asks.

He chuckles. "Did it sound like one?" And moves, still that languid indolence of a barely-there morning. Moves away from under her so her head falls to the blankets and she stares up into his face, upside down, right above her. Brilliant eyes, still flecked with demonic red.

"Do you want coffee, too?"

He vanishes from her sight without waiting for an answer. Morinth pushes herself up to her elbows, watches him as he crosses the room to where the terminal sits idle on a table before he heads for the kitchen.

Clay turns around again, now lying on his stomach, the blanket half slips from his gorgeous face.

Morinth sits up and the rooms seems suddenly empty around her. Shepard doesn't personalise his space. There is no clutter and no mess, save for the clothes that last night scattered across the smooth floor. A few datapads by the desk, Shepard's pistol and holster over the back of a chair and Morinth's own gear on the couch. It doesn't look like anyone lives in this place and while Shepard hasn't been here for a long while, his cabin on the Normandy looks almost the same.

Morinth slips to her feet and pads towards the small kitchen, stops to lean in the doorway. And there, just maybe, is a hint of the man beneath. The kitchen is as empty and clean as the rest of the apartment, appliances like new along the wall, but the levers and glass of an old coffee-machine break the style.

The sound of the coffee mill cuts through the silence, dull and merciless to join the gurgle of the boiling water.

Morinth steps over the threshold and walks until she stands close to him. It is the scent of coffee, this time, that distracts from him. She says, "And yet you haven't said no, have you?"

She sees his shoulders tense, ever so slightly, and the predator in her knows how to read the way he adjusts his balance. There is the quiet clink as he puts the spoon down on the stone of the counter. And Shepard turns, fast and devastating, a battlefield move and she doesn't fight back. He is far stronger than her and she has no doubt he could outlast even her biotics if he truly wanted to. What's more, though, is that she does not _want _to fight him, she purrs in delight, baring her teeth with a sharp spike of pain as his hands close around her wrists. He spins her around, both her slender wrists caught in his hand and she is pushed against the cool, smooth tiles of the wall. His other, free, hand slides down her stomach, pulls her back against him and her only regret, for a tiny second, is that she never got rid of her dress, but its a thin, inconsequential barrier.

"I changed the topic for a reason," he says with a low growl in his voice and his lips ghost along the side of her jaw. "But let's be clear about one thing." He is so close he might as well be talking inside her head.

"I want you," he says and pulls her even closer, making her nerve ends flare bright blue and cold at the lure. It would be so easy to reach out and grab him, tear him down from the razor edge where he has himself so delicately balanced.

"So very very much," his voice drifts lower, a croon and growl. He punctuates his words with whips of his tongue and the faintest grind of his hips against her.

"But I'm not going to compromise," he finishes and with the steel coming into the harsh velvet of his voice. "I'm all for using some poor sucker like Clay, but if there is ever just the two of us, it's going to be fucking worth it. For both of us."

She can barely hear him over the rush of blood in her head and the cackle of power in her nerves. His meaning comes to her using other pathways, sinking right through her skin and into her very bones.

She turns her head as far as she can, sees his profile from the corner of her eyes, but cannot read his expression. In that moment, she doesn't really need to.

"I can make you want me more than life," she says.

"Yes, that's the challenge," he agrees and he lets go of her hands and loosens his grip on her, but wraps both hands around her, nuzzles her neck so she drops her forehead to press at the wall.

"Let's not take the fun out of it," he concludes. He nips at her skin and it's almost gentle, then lets go, steps back. She turns with him, lets herself melt against the wall, smiling ferally at his turned back.

A quiet, insistent beep comes from the living room, scratching the atmosphere like diamond on glass. Shepard pours himself a cup of coffee, dumps sugar in and saunters back as if nothing has happened at all.

There are several drinks in the galaxy both more potent and far more tasteful than human coffee, but Shepard has never managed to get a taste for any of them. She admits, though, that the scent is rather delicious. She pours herself a cup as well and follows him.

Shepard sits by the desk, sloppily, one legs lifted and pressed against the edge of the table. He lights himself a new cigarette as Miranda's face flickers into view. The leather cushioning of the chair snarls against his skin as he moves, reaching for his cup.

Miranda's odd sense of entitlement when it comes to Shepard always rubs Morinth the wrong way. As if bringing him back to life somehow turned him into her private possession and it's beyond Morinth why Shepard complies with that ludicrous notion. Schematics flitter across the screen in Miranda's wake as the odd calm of concentration settles around Shepard.

He looks over his shoulder, points his chin at the bed and says, "Get sleeping beauty out of here, I've got work to do."

She frowns at little and Shepard gives a distracted grin. "If you're still feeling frisky, I'm sure he'll help you out."

"Personally, I doubt it. You are more his type."

"Like you leave them a choice," he comments and there is no denying that.

Morinth slides to the bed, puts her hand lightly on Clay's shoulder, but her grip is not hard enough to wake him just yet. She says, "Didn't you promise Parasini to keep a low profile?"

"She knows how I roll," Shepard shrugs and the leather whispers again.

Outside, the storm picks up speed and ferocity, the wind loud enough to make itself heard even through the isolation. Morinth doubts Miranda's small shuttle will be able to land in Hanshan as quickly as she's estimated. There is still time. Tendrils of power bleed from her fingers into Clay's sleeping, dreaming mind.

* * *

**End of the _Foreplay/Afterglow_ mini-arc**

* * *

**Author's Note: **I don't have a good feeling about the spelling in this part. Sometimes I just don't get a grip on it. I hope it was still readable enough and I apologise, it's as good as I can make it.

I love Gianna Parasini. But something always goes so awfully wrong with romances in Mass Effect, I don't think I actually want her as a love interest.

I hope you enjoyed reading!


	5. Sunny Tuchanka

_Takes place during Grunt's loyalty mission._

* * *

**— Sunny Tuchanka —**

Morinth hears a buzzing in her ears and her visions darkens momentarily as she falls. She has misjudged the distance, smacked herself into a rusty beam and it leaves her momentarily stunned. She bares her teeth when her concentration scatters around her and the klixen is on her. She feels the heat of its breath even through the insulating layers of her armour as its weight bears down on her.

A moment is all she needs, less than a second and she could blast the beast off her with nothing but a thought, but there is _no _time at all, not another heartbeat, not another breath. Just _nothing, _her life spinning away into darkness.

Something hard and dark knocks against the klixen, she feels the impact shudder through the beast's body all through her, hard enough to be painful, stunning in its immediacy, as if all of time has combined into this, when her all her promised futures come crashing back to her.

She breathes and blinks, clears her head and tries to order her thoughts. A little away, Grunt grips the klixen and smashes it against another pillar repeatedly, roaring furiously as he does it. The klixen goes limp and Grunt drops it, dodges away surprisingly nimbly, takes aim and fires a shot from the Claymore.

Before she can say something — a reluctant, unfamiliar expression of gratitude perhaps — Shepard's shadow falls over her and there is another bark from his own shotgun as it sends a klixen flying. Silence follows, broken only from more gunfire. Grunt hasn't stayed, has already moved on. He howls in triumph against the harsh winds.

Shepard steps away from her, spares her a quick glance, assessing her condition in one lightning moment and then looking elsewhere, his eyes and mind already scanning the battlefield for other threats.

Morinth struggles to her feet, sees Grunt return to them, eyes alight while his face and body are soiled by klixen and varren innards. Normally, he would scoff at her, the way he had done earlier. Grunt had no respect for her brand of danger, for her lethal subtlety and maybe that's why Shepard picked her. Teaching them both a lesson in the process. Grunt _will _follow Shepard's command and Grunt _will _work well with anyone Shepard hands him. It is a useful experience, considering the battle into which they all are heading, where no one knows how the tides would force them together. All of this team, they will have to trust each other implicitly, without holding back at all, without questioning or thinking.

And the lesson for Morinth? Although she has never been much of a team player, she knows her place and she understands the new game she is part of now. For her, Tuchanka is something else. A lesson in humility, the unrelenting, unchangeable fact of her own mortality thrown into her face and stinging her eyes with the radioactive dust. For all her power, some battles are not hers to be won.

She stands in awe as the thresher maw shows itself. The very ground vibrates under her feet as the giant creature moves below them, playing in the ruins of the krogan city like a child in a sandbox.

Something closes her throat and it takes her long seconds to recognise the feeling as fear. She wastes time in examining it, in letting it spin through her mind like an alien thought and the thresher wavers in front of her, hurls acidic spit in her direction and she just barely manages to dive for cover.

Some old, rusted column has been in the way, and the force of the spit sends it crashing over her head, the metal already dissolving as it comes down.

She breathes hard through her nose, won't risk choking on the dust right then. Shepard and Grunt have taken cover a little further along, side by side and hunched behind another feeble barrier. Shepard is looking back at Grunt and she can see the excitement spark in his eyes even at the distance. He has to yell against the roaring of the falling city around them, the rumble of the earth below.

"Your kill, Grunt!" Shepard declares and rolls to his feet, hefting his rifle and sending a round of shots towards the thresher. It yanked its head around, mouth flaring wide as it focuses on the new annoyance.

The thresher's attention stays on Shepard while Grunt darts off the other way, faster and far more nimble than Morinth would willingly have given him credit for. Grunt makes for the lower ground, closes the distance fast, but the thresher is already zoning in on Shepard and he has placed himself out in the open, far away from even the slightest cover.

Morinth snarls and propels herself from her hiding place, running only a few paces, to stop and fire herself at the thresher. It's head whips around and the spittle originally intended for Shepard comes hurling her way.

She dives down, tries to roll but something hot hits her arm as she throws it up for a semblance of balance. She goes down in a cloud of dust, it blinds her for a moment but she has no time to worry about that. She keeps going, finds her feet again and even fires at the thresher's direction even as she goes. There is the low, resounding bark of the Widow close by her ear and a moment later, Shepard closes his hand around her upper arm, pulls her with him and then down behind a pillar.

He pulls her arm forward, harshly, her joints protesting wildly, and rips the gauntlet from her arm. The spittle has already eaten through the layers of hardsuit, burning to the padding beneath. Patches of skin come off with it when Shepard keeps tearing.

"Shit," she mutters.

"You'll live," he declares. "Keep your head down."

She cannot detect any actual _concern _in his voice or face, though it is hard to read in this moment, time has slowed only for a moment and he doesn't linger, doesn't stay. He calls back over his shoulder as he goes, "Cover me!"

Blood is running down her wounded arm, where the skin is gone it _hurts _to move, to even think of moving. She turns around, brings her gun and aims around the corner of the beam, praying that this one will withstand the onslaught rather than bury her as it comes crashing down.

They kill the thresher together. Shepard holds his place in the open, has an uncanny ability to dodge the acidic spittle and between the pinpricks of Morinth's shots and Shepard's distraction, Grunt has made his way across the rubble towards the bulging body of the thresher where it towers from the ground.

It's too far to make it out clearly, too far for her to hear the shot, but the thresher suddenly shakes, writhes back from them and twist around, its neck curls, finds the new target so much closer. The Widow bellows and this time the shot hits true, sends a chunk of meat flying from the side of the thresher's face. It snaps around again and a second shot rips at its neck.

The thresher shivers again, seems to hesitate for a long second, then throws its head back and slides down, doubtlessly meaning to withdraw underground and attack from some other direction, get at its prey from another angle. It will be the last mistake the creature ever makes. Sliding down, it comes face to face with Grunt, suddenly on the same level. The thresher opens its maw wide, but before it can attack or even swallow Grunt, he release a round of shots right down its throat. The thresher jerks back, stung, twists to the sides. The incendiary rounds ignite the thresher acid, heat burning down the thresher's throat and it explodes in a spray of orange and green.

Grunt stalks back to them, eyes ablaze and a grin plastered savagely across his face.

* * *

Her mother's expression itches on her face, more ill-fitting than ever before now in the vicious air of Tuchanka, more thoroughly uncomfortable than the trace elements of Thresher acid still pumping through her system. Her arm throbs painfully with every tiny involuntary twitch of muscle. Bare flesh was showing through the yet transparent, artificial skin; it'd darken as her body incorporates it onto herself, gradually supplementing it with her own tissue.

So she is exhausted and in pain and still a little angry at Shepard for throwing her in this particular fire, but for the most part she feels almost content.

The krogan are a species on a decaying orbit. Regardless of what the salarians claim, the Genophage is killing them. It might be slow, it might seem gentle, but it is a genocide nevertheless. It changes so many things, it has taken away everything the krogan might once have had of culture, or hope or promise. It leaves them with nothing but the might of each singular warrior. At the edge of death, all celebration is wild.

So it comes as no surprise that the feast is already in full swing when they even return, the news of their triumph preceding then. Wrex's face twists in irony, but he seems more amused than anything. The krogan understand strength, after all, perhaps better than anyone else in the galaxy.

A glass is put on the table in front of her, pulling her from her contemplation. The liquid sloshes lazily, thickly. Human blood looks like this, although she doubts such things would be served tonight. Then again, Wrex knows Shepard well enough and Shepard wouldn't care either way.

"Of course I don't know if your Code allows it," Garrus says and settles on the low bench opposite her.

She forgets about her wounds as she reaches for the glass, winces at the sudden flare of pain. She lets it cover for the small, ironic smile that would be entirely inappropriate for her mother's rigid dignity.

She says, "The Code seems to have been unaware of krogan Rites of Passage."

She drinks, lets the hot-cold slide down her throat, no less merciless than the Thresher acid, but infinitely more pleasant

Garrus is silent, watching the debris-scattered yard below them. Morinth prefers to study him instead. The ruined side of his face is towards her, harsh, irreparable damage down and only freshly healed. He is lucky to have retained mobility of his mandibles and their arch has come out nearly unblemished.

As an asari — and a hunter with peculiar tastes — she looks at Garrus like a turian would, reads the ridges of his nose and the curve of his fringe, the perfect raptor-shape of his face. Garrus has been handsome, once, before that blast took half his face off. Handsome enough that echoes of it still remain, a clear imprint of memory past the destruction. It makes for an interesting combination, this face, full of contradiction and contrast.

"So," she says. "Archangel."

He snorts, not looking at her. "It guess it was good while it lasted."

There are two things on her mind and for a moment it almost chokes her. She, herself, as the demon that she is, appreciates Garrus' stepping outside the rules, for taking his gun and beginning to carve the world according to what _he _wanted. And not only that, but he had also been cold-blooded and charismatic enough to pull it off. When she came to Omega, Archangel's name had still been on anyone's tongue, halfway to becoming the criminal scum of Omega's personal bogeyman. People still _fear _Archangel and she will respect everyone who commands the hearts and minds like this.

However, she is unsure how her mother would have seen it and in the destroyed glory of Tuchanka, she finds she doesn't care.

"It was an impressive feat," she says, after a moment's consideration.

He glances at her from the side, an odd, dark twinkle in the vast blackness of his eye. "You don't disapprove?" he asks.

Something else is here, Morinth thinks, something more below the surface of his words.

"You saw injustice," she says, trying very hard to not to drawl the word, holding firmly to her role. "And you choose to act."

_And left carnage in your wake, _she adds with the beginnings of a purr in her mind, _carved your name into the history of Omega for all of posterity to see. _

He shrugs slightly, a twitch in his mandibles that might — or might not — indicate a smile.

In the yard below them, Shepard sits on the floor in a circle with half a dozen krogan. He has been teaching them some kind of human card game. Credit chits and thermal clips are piled between them, sometimes topped off by some battle token or other — a mummified salarian horn, a turian mandible. She hasn't seen Shepard this relaxed before. He is settled back casually, supporting himself on one outstretched arm and looking through the smoke of a cigarette at the worn cards in his hand. He shakes his head, then, laughs as he tosses the cards aside and one of the krogan roars in victory.

"I wish I could have met Archangel," she says, honestly, despite her mother's voice. A comfortable little tremor travels down into the pit of her stomach and settles there. Hunting a creature like that, oh the glory of it! She would have enjoyed nothing more, if only she had come to Omega earlier instead of dallying on Illium and hunting lesser prey there.

A low growl leaves his throat. "I think," he says, quite deliberately. "It turned out better this way. Fewer… misunderstandings. You never know what would have gone wrong."

_He knows, _she thinks with an icy shock where the desire still shivers, a sudden sense of dread underneath the heat of her damaged skin. _He knows that I know that he knows… _like a symphony and she would never dare putting this to the test.

She thinks it should, perhaps, not surprise her. He outsmarted all of Omega's criminal ilk — all carrying themselves with instincts and experience gained in long centuries of doing business on the fringes of society, in the heart of the Terminus. Garrus' instincts would be difficult to fool, near-impossible to truly waylay. Besides, Shepard keeps few secrets from Garrus. He has seen through to Shepard's core and there are sins that bind people.

"There is that," she concedes as noncommittally as she can.

She doesn't quite understand the multi-facetted relationship Shepard shares with Garrus. She sense what Garrus will become, the force of nature he might be once he frees himself from the commander's shadow. She wonders if Garrus knows, though, realises that Shepard and all the unconditional trust he places in him, is only holding him back. Perhaps he will come to resent Shepard once this truth reveals itself to him.

"I thank you for the drink," she says and her mother's voice doesn't grate quite as much as it has before. The truth has taken a different shape between them. It doesn't threaten her in the way she imagined it would. In time, she thinks, maybe she can even find a home among this odd collection of strangers that inhabit the Normandy.

She leans back in her seat, watches Garrus from the corners of her eyes. She tries a slow smile, contentment rather than any attempt at seduction and he flares his mandibles again as if in indecision.

"You are welcome," he says eventually. "It's the least I can do for a friend."

* * *

**End of _Sunny Tuchanka_**

* * *

**Author's Note:** Certainly not what everyone expected, right? Going back that far in the storyline, but before ME3 came out, I was in the middle my Insanity playthrough and Tuchanka was the last I'd played before I got distracted by the new one.

This is not the place to expound on my opinion about both Morinth's treatment and the endings debacle. I'm planning at least one more story, possibly two or even three. I may be attempting an AU that changes Morinth's fate. I hate AUs normally and with the endings not quite written in stone yet, I'd rather wait a little while longer.


	6. The Precipice of Change

_Takes place immediately after **Arrival**. _All usual warnings apply in terms of content. Also, watch out for **ME3 spoilers** from here on out. I won't try and mark them individually.

* * *

**— The Precipice of Change —**

The galaxy is changing and Morinth feels like she is losing him. He has come away from Hagalaz, but she doesn't know whether he has come from Liara's bed and the only consolidation she has is that Miranda is equally left in the dark. But this is not what bothers her, Morinth's claim on him is woven of different stuff, her bond goes deeper, rooted in the core of blackness in his soul, his power, his capability for violence, the sensual manifestation of his ruthlessness. Those things he never shows, never truly reveals to anyone else. Oh, they know, in their way, the galaxy knows what man its saviour is, but there is too much skill and strength and charisma for them to dismiss him, even as he is falling from grace.

No, Morinth is losing him to the coming war. Everything is moving faster now, and there is no time for her to set up an elaborate game, no time for long, sparkling nights on Omega or Illium, no respite for both of them, to recline on Noverian velvet in a frosty-beautiful snowstorm.

Shepard is preoccupied, distracted, his brilliant mind full of plans and plots, of fleet capabilities and numbers and what loyalties to trust and where to shoot before he does. Things have begun, Morinth feels it in her blood, fate has picked them up and has hurled them into the chaos of a war the like the galaxy has never seen.

The Alliance has reached out to him again, after months of silent condemnation, reached out and wrapped their poisonous tendrils firmly around his throat and heart — the very place where her hands should be. In the privacy of her mind, she finds it disgraceful how easily the wolf becomes the lapdog at a simple command.

And he dies again, almost, out there without her, the cold, endless void trying to claim him once more.

But even leashed, he fights like a god, she doesn't have to have seen it to know. The pictures come effortlessly, when she closes her eyes in the silence of a Normandy night, the compelling fantasy of a panorama of carnage.

The Normandy shakes and shivers in some imagined rapture as Joker rides her through the relay just ahead of destruction. Morinth likes to think she can taste the power, solid and charged, at the back of her throat as it laps at their feet, greedy for the escaping prey.

She feels nothing about the deaths and it bothers her that Shepard seems to. This isn't quite the man she has fallen so hard for, the man she went hunting with and the only one for whom she ever was willing to compromise who she is. Neither, in all truth, is it the man his own history paints him as.

She has asked him about Torfan, once, with his head resting on her breast, when the sweat had barely dried.

Mellow, lazy in the afterglow, he said, "I do what I have to. I thought you'd figured that out by now."

"But it marked you," she said, tracing delicate fingers over the muscles on his arm. "It named you."

He had not immediately reply, perhaps momentarily lost in contemplation.

"Everything marks us, Morinth," he said eventually, slowly, deliciously as if speaking to himself rather than her. "And named we are only by others. Who cares what they think?"

She knows how he kills, has seen him and knows he feels no remorse. Those new dead, however, they seem to eat at him and she doesn't understand until she realises that it's not the deaths that rankle, but the defeat they symbolise. Three-hundred thousand restless ghosts proclaiming his failure to all of the galaxy. Was this the moment where the pieces begin to fall into place? Has he been given a glimpse of the future, a vision of how their greatest war would be fought? Sacrifices and bitter defeats that mean nothing, until all glory has burned away.

She watches Hackett leave and he stirs passing desire in her, but once he is gone, her attention snaps back.

From her place, she sees Shepard talk with Chakwas and their body language is quite clear. Chakwas is worried and would prefer to keep him in medbay and he has brushed away her concern.

Shepard catches Morinth's gaze through the glass and takes his leave.

Walking towards her, she lets all the original admiration wash through her. Suddenly, it's difficult to believe she has harboured doubts mere moments before. Has she really likened him to a lapdog? The notion seems ridiculous, impossible to relate to the man in front of her.

He gives her a nod, but says, "EDI."

"Yes, Commander."

"Tell the team to assemble in half an hour."

With EDI's confirmation, Shepard focuses on Morinth and the blood freezes in her veins. She knows, in that moment, what he will do. She fears few things in this galaxy, but the idea of exposure disquiets her on a level far above of what she can control. It's an odd, unfamiliar sense of helplessness. The last time she has felt anything like this was on that shuttle taking her to the isolated home, where she was to spend the rest of her life. It was desolate, radical, the point of no return, when the balance has tipped.

She trails him to the elevator. She has thought she is ready, almost close enough to _want _these people to know her for what she is. They have earned her respect and they have trusted her with their lives. It should not be difficult, after the fires they walked together. And yet, and yet… here she is, trying to shake the feeling in her gut that is ugly and far too close to fear to contemplate.

"Shepard…" she says in the beginning of an objection.

He slips his hand down her back, a gesture strangely reassuring in its uncharacteristic gentleness, especially when she reminds herself that he has enough strength to break her spine.

The door closes and she leans back into him, closing her eyes in enjoyment.

"I love you," she says.

"I know."

She turns and he is so beautifully, tantalisingly close. "Promise me something," she says and knows he never will.

"If this goes bad," she continues, voice pitched to a lover's croon, despite and because of what she says. "If the Reapers come and conquer, promise me you will come to me before they take you."

He laughs, just a little. "That's not on the agenda."

"So what is?" she asks.

The elevator stops, a tiny shake travelling up her body.

"Shower," he answers with a shrug as he starts walking to his cabin. "Then," he looks back over his shoulder, "we come clean about you and we plot our next step."

"You have already decided," she challenges. She crosses the empty space of his apartment, brushes her fingers over the prothean artefact on the table — it reacts ever so faintly to her touch. She drapes herself across the bed.

"Do you really think it's wise?" she asks, avoids his gaze for a moment to focus on his hands as he slides open the cabinet against the wall, picks up a bundle of clothes.

"They'll learn the truth sooner or later," he replies. "Many suspect something's off already. I don't want anyone feeling betrayed, not when it can come and screw us over later. I won't have such liabilities in my crew."

"You do understand that not everyone's morals will be as flexible as yours?"

Again, he shrugs. "They are free to walk if my decisions aren't to their liking."

Of course he says that and he might even believe it, but Morinth knows that is one of the ways he keeps them. None of them are _free_ to walk away from him, in the same way a planet is incapable of _choosing_ to leave the orbit of its sun. Yet, he will give them the choice, _ask _and let them deal with the consequences. He will not force them, but they will know they are wrong in deserting him.

He stops by the table, seems to consider for a moment, then places his hand on the artefact. It pulses hard under his hand, seems to change and expand and yet stay the same.

Morinth shifts forward on the bed, giving him a slow, sensual look. "I heard _shower_," she croons, smiles playfully.

"Yes, as in clean and as in quickly, but feel free to imagine what you will," he answers and adds with a hard little sneer, "But I like the idea of being found dead in my bath one day. The great Commander Shepard bashes his head in on the toilet."

He tilts his head, strides past his desk. "And lets his death mean nothing."

For someone so skilled, so legendary in surviving he contemplates his own dying far too often. It must be an echo, she decides, something shaken deep within him two years ago and never properly laid to rest. It leaves an unpleasant taste in her mouth and she pulls her lips into a bitter grimace.

They have grown closer these past few weeks, close enough that Shepard seems to have forgotten what she is, willing to expose himself to her, tell her his weaknesses, trust to leave her alone in his quarters. She has never known anyone for so long and perhaps it is inevitable, perhaps it is a blessing that she kills them before she learns too much of what she has no desire to know.

There is no doubting Shepard's power, nothing will change that, but there was something else and she hates the scent of it, ugly sense of vulnerability soiling the perfection that compels her so.

The pattering of water slides into the cabin, hypnotically rhythmic and distant through the thin wall separating her from Shepard and she sits up to watch the door.

Perhaps she should leave. Perhaps she has stayed too long and her curse sours everything, where it isn't allowed to kill. She could take the memory she has of him and preserve the _idea _of the man before the reality slips as surely from her grasp as he does himself. He has her leashed, pulling her close and forcing her away as he wishes, letting her flail and starve until he choses differently. Oh, there is no doubting Shepard's desire, either, he is genuine and it frustrates him as much as her, to be unable to act on it, nothing at all beyond the substitutes they have been seducing and they don't _count. _

The sound of water is beating at her mind and she _remembers_ the measureless black oceans of Shepard's soul, so briefly glimpsed, so tantalising and unique. She uncoils from the neatly made bed, crosses the room like the advancing demon she is.

The bathroom door's sensors pick her up, flare a tiny hellish red in denial. So instead she leans against the door, hands braced against the frame and her forehead resting on the unfeeling metal, as if she might will herself right through it, if only her need were great enough.

"Shepard," she calls. The door will not budge, but if it carries the sound of water outside, it will let her voice travel within. She listens to the pattering, imagines the water trace the shape of his body, sees him move in her mind's eye, guided by the water. The small distortions vanish and the whispering becomes perfectly smooth when he steps free of the spray.

She knows she cannot feel it, _knows _the impact is too faint, but she will swear to those coming ends of her days she that a slight vibration shivers through the metal when Shepard leans against it from the other side.

She hears him, impossibly close, less than an inch between them.

"Yes," he says.

She smiles to herself, imagines this movement, too, crossing the infinite borderland and touching his cheek.

"Do you touch yourself?"

There is a pause, only the mutter of water in the background building another sort of wall all around them, separating them from all other realities which would claim and use and discard both of them in the dark days ahead of them.

"Yes," he says then.

She regrets that he's left the water behind and its illusionary, aural paintbrush to help flesh out the fantasies in her thoughts. To make it all more real, when she can barely even hear him.

"Imagine me," she says, lifts her voice and lets her lips graze the unfeeling metal in front of her. She lets her eyes fall closed.

"Are you?" she asks. "My hands on you, my nails digging into your flesh?"

Her fingers curl against the doorway, feeling nothing but air and dead matter under her fingertips.

This time, his voice is lower, barely able to penetrate the door, closer to the vibration Morinth willed into existence before. It's carried on the hiss of the water, picked up by the thin sliver of biotic blue that has began to drop from her mind.

"Yes."

It is so _hard _sometimes to hold back, to keep her power leashed and pulled close to her, where she might still retain control instead of subconsciously entangling him in its tendrils.

She laughs, she can't help herself. It's a croon and a purr, it sounds like a promise — the one he denied her and she remembers that. Condensations fogs the door, where her breathing has hitched, cool and damp, coming off the surface like a touch, the kiss of death she delivers.

She keeps talking, voice pitched just loud enough to penetrate the barrier between them, closes her eyes as she describes what she will do to him — _with _him — when the door opens. It is a game, of course, like everything between them. She no longer pretends — at least in the privacy of her own mind — that she wants to consume him. He is more, is above, such trifles. She never tells him so, it would ruin everything, take away the sting and thrill of their tightrope dance.

She loses herself in the symphonies of her own words, pictures them as the finest of strings by which to pull his limbs. Tells him when to _stroke _and _tighten his grip _and to _tease_ and _with_ _just the tip of a finger, Shepard… _

It would be easy to reach him even so, physical restrains can keep biotics at bay only so far, only within limits and she sees the blue glare through her closed eyes, where it has began to gather around her fingertips to crawl along the metal, nibbling at every tiny fracture it can find. Easy to reach him, touch him with her mind. She senses him on the other side of the door, the solidity of his body and the jagged edge of his mind.

She cannot hear him, the pattering of the water is too loud, the fantasy she spins too vivid inside her own head. Everything merges, her words and the images she creates, the pure, unfiltered intention and the wavering blue she has to keep leashed. Her powers do begin to stretch despite her best attempts, reach for him behind the door and a tiny, involuntary moan leaves her lips. It hits her like electricity, stings all the way down through her body, the depth of darkness there, stirred now by nothing but her words. It is — almost — exhilarating enough. A mere physical orgasm is nothing to an asari, more an adaption to other species' mating habits than anything. They do not _need _it, do not crave it, when it is a faint, empty taste compared to the fusion of all sensation, of soul and being and history.

And always, always she mourns it, in moments like this. Her curse, setting her apart and leaving her with this one burden to bear, to prove her worth. It is a test, she things, thrown at her by fate or destiny or chance, to see if her will is strong to rise above the demon inside.

"Shepard," she says again, breaks herself from the waves.

_"Yes."_

"Say my name," she adds. She lets it hang there, like an order, for him to take or refuse as he pleases. She hears a growl, verging into laughter somewhere in the cadences that are lost in their separation. She has to laugh herself, shudders as she does, feels a different connection that has nothing to do with the nature of her being. She dares reach for him again, just for the trace of his lust and dreaming of the searing stars being denied to them both.

"Morinth," he says in a low growl, just loud enough to hear the tethering of his control as it begins to unravel._"Morinth." _

In the end, it is _his_ voice that drags her down with him, just the whisperings of the tremor there. She feels boneless, lets herself fall against the door and the cold metal seems to catch her like a lover does, holds her on her feet when she wants to fall to pieces.

She chuckles quietly to herself, not quite as dissatisfied as she has expected to be.

The rhythm of the water breaks again, distorted and rewritten by Shepard's presence.

She releases her grip on the door reluctantly, unwilling to sever whatever fragile link it offers her.

It doesn't take long until the door finally slides back and Shepard leans in the doorway, half-dressed only, shirt in one hand, his bare skin still glistening damply. He returns her scrutiny languidly and says, "You never told me your real name."

She laughs again. "You make Morinth sound like it must be mine," she says. "I'm partial to that."

"Fair enough," he nods, steps free of the doorway and past her, hints of stream curl from the bathroom, tendrils dispersing quickly in the cooler air. Shepard pulls the shirt over his head.

Morinth says, "I have a few ideas of what to do with my mouth. For next time."

Shepard chuckles, looks back over his shoulder and gives her a fleeting grin. "_That _would require a bit more practice on my part."

She laughs, too. She has never quite understood the appreciation of humour, it seems a weapon for the weak, a defensive mechanism for those who have nothing else. Shepard's wry amusement is something else, however, something that links back into the core of his darkness. Sometimes she thinks he might have lied, that he _has _seen the face of eternity when he was dead, when he had transcended the frontiers of the living.

Shepard looks away from her, stands for a moment with his face raised towards the window above his bed, to the rushing stars and the great empty void they inhabit.

"I'm going to disband the squad and the crew," he says, calm again, the commander again and their little interlude, however pleasant, still meant and changed nothing. "The others don't need to know about you, if it bothers you so much."

He looks at her. "I'd still prefer to get it out in the open, but it's your call."

"Shepard, no," she says firmly. She cannot quite hide the fear seeping through into her voice. She swallows dry, has to look away from him. "It's not good. I'll take care of myself."

She doesn't notice him approach, lost for a moment as she is in her own, swirling history and the memories of running and hiding and _playing _for so long. Revealing herself, even to this crew is utterly beyond her, and the realisation shocks her more than it does him. He picks up her chin between two fingers, pulls her face towards him and she is surprised to see him smiling. "You can't promise me that," he observes. "We are headed for bad weather. You'll be safer with friends."

"Shepard, there will be no safe places left very soon," she replies, watching his lips. "What will going to Earth accomplish? Can't you just stay here?" She makes a gesture with one hand, knows neither of them sees it. "Like this?"

He shakes his head. "I'm a pariah with a ship full of misfits. It's a romantic enough fairy tale, but I'm a soldier and we are heading for a war. I'll need the Alliance to back me and if they want a show trial beforehand, I won't disappoint."

"You think it'll just be for show?"

A shrug. He pulls her closer, trails a hand down her side and around, fingers playing along her spine briefly. He almost kisses her, but snaps his head away before they can touch, a smile on his lips so she knows the teasing was deliberate.

"It's out of my hands," he says, turns away, strides towards the door. "If the Alliance wants my blood, let them have a taste. But if they are still looking for a leader, I'm their man."

He stops one last time to look back at her. "I'll let you off on Omega. You know how to handle yourself there, do you?"

* * *

**End of _The Precipice of Change_**

* * *

**Author's Note:** I found it kind of weird that Shepard apparently had no idea what happened to his crew after going to Earth. I mean, that he isn't up to date after being incarcerated makes sense but, 'hey, no idea how you even got off the ship' is a little odd. Anyway, my Shep's something of a control freak, he'd not just head to Earth without some planning beforehand. I hate AU, but I'll have to make a handful of adjustments if I mean to make my stories work.

Title taken from Dragon Age 2, obviously. I freaking love that quote.


	7. Rubicon

**Warning: **Sex and violence. This is a Shepard POV chapter!

* * *

**— Rubicon —**

People have lines they will not cross, things they will not do. It turns their stomach even to hear, even to _know _that somewhere in the galaxy, unspeakable things are done. Crimes, in the general consciousness, too hideous to be forgiven. It's something that goes deeper than all the rhetoric of culture and civilisation and common morals — politicians always sprout those, regardless of where they crawled out from under their rock. Invisible lines, drawn like solid frontiers in some imagined sand at everyone's feet that keeps societies from turning on themselves. The simple fact that certain things, people _just do not do. _He has heard the rationalisations, but Shepard has never quite bought into them. He isn't bothered by transgressions of one kind or another, isn't repulsed and it puzzles him sometimes how fetishist it can become to others, how fascinating some perverted fantasy can become. He wonders, sometimes, where his line is. He has always entertained — always been rather enamoured with — the idea that he _has _found his line, once in the past, and never even seen it for what it was.

The public, he knows, will point to Torfan, would say _this is it, this is where he fell _and salute him with secret, callous, grudging admiration. He has never given Torfan as much weight, although he knows well enough how it stands out in his career. How one small event turned a talented soldier into something more; a man who might be made a Spectre, one who would stand on the crumbling ruins of the Presidium, one considered dangerous enough to move galaxies to kill and burn fortunes to resurrect.

In quiet moments, he realises what on odd thing it has become, this life of his and he tries to trace its twists and turns back to the dirty back alleys of his youth. It doesn't awe him, though he supposes maybe it should, sometimes. It awes others well enough.

Regardless of what the public might like to think, Torfan _changed _nothing. He was the same man, walking away from there.

"So, where have you been?"

He glances to the side, along the edge of his glass, taking his time in answering. It isn't the kind of bar where you'd _want _to meet people, he has no interest in new acquaintances, but he hopes there are ways to somehow overcome the Cerberus implants that foolishly take alcohol for poison that should be cleansed from his system.

An asari has sat down two stools away and he dimly remembers her calling her order to the bartender a moment ago.

He takes his time, considers. Can't well tell her about the Shadow Broker, can he? Or Bahak for that matter, only to launch into another Cassandra speech about the Reaper threat? Even he has grown tired of that one.

He smiles a little, shrugs and takes a slow sip from his glass. "Nothing special," he says finally. "Only through Omega-4."

They will tell you all asari are beautiful, but it's a stupid piece of bullshit propaganda if ever there was one. Asari rarely are genuinely _ugly, _but it's anyone's guess how you even begin to judge that across several species and their differing, subjective ideas of what beauty is actually like. Asari are a myth, however, a juvenile fantasy made available to all the galaxy like one nugget of kindness dangled before your eyes. Personally, Shepard has always suspected it has something to do with the startling, utterly rare blue of their skin. It's an uncommon enough colour in animals and sentients alike, startling and bright and so utterly _alien _the idea of touching it, of _having, _turns out just too irresistible.

"You don't say," the asari remarks and takes her bottle, lets it hover between two fingers above the grease of the bar counter. She doesn't believe him — she doesn't quite _disbelieve _him either. It doesn't seem to bother her either way.

This asari is not beautiful. She looks to have been in a firefight recently herself and although her clothes are clean, she carries herself as if she is still strapped in a deformed hardsuit. Her skin is dark, edging into sapphire and then purple. If he's had to judge her age — and asari are kind of tough — he'd say somewhere between an overaged maiden and a matron that couldn't get behind the idea of motherhood.

She has a scar at the side of her face, healed, but never properly treated to prevent the mark. Tough to find trustworthy doctors on Omega, and then, there are scars people sometimes want to keep. A fact Cerberus hadn't been too bothered with, putting him back together. It's always darkly amused him that he's always wanted to walk out on them just because of that. A tiny scar on his eyebrow, left there by a thrown piece of cutlery by a desperate batarian. _Torfan. _He wanted to keep that scar.

"It leads to the galactic core," he adds, lets something of the nonchalance bleed from his voice.

"Hmm," she makes. Drinks. Says, "Well, if you've got to show off, do it big, I guess. I respect that."

He sets his glass down. He props his elbow on the counter and rests his head in his palm, watches her from this altered perspective. "You don't believe me," he says bemusedly.

She laughs, "I think you look like someone who _might _do something like that. Who is to say? Me, I just want a drink."

He keeps watching her for a long moment. He has come to Omega only to drop Morinth off and he doesn't quite recall, now, how he had ended up here on the way back, how many wrong turns it had taken for him end up in this grimy bar.

He slips into the next seat, the one on her side, observes as she leans a little towards him as he does, almost close enough to bump her shoulder with his. He says, "Sounds like a plan. My treat."

"I won't say no," she nods. Looks away to catch the bartender's eye. Orders them a bottle of something whose name he doesn't recognise.

The constant that Morinth has been in his life is gone. He's not one for attachment, never was. He's learned early in his life that everyone — _everyone — _will one day be dead and gone. If she meant nothing, though, he would be back on the Normandy by now.

He wonders how likely it will be for him to find her again, out there, with a raging war tearing down everything civilisation has ever erected. But then, Morinth will be just another lost soul, a casualty like so many others. Whether she dies because he will have to burn everyone to save them all, or whether she dies because she has to fight on her own out there in the cold. He can't quite see the difference. He just hopes she'll take down a few enemies with her when she does, but somehow, he doesn't doubt that.

Shepard says, "So what's your story?"

The asari takes her time, drinks in silence and keeps looking back to him from the corners of her eyes.

This, Shepard catches himself thinking not much later, is too easy. Of course, soldiers back from the fray are never difficult. It has something to do with being alive, against the odds, an echo of physicality that has to be sated, like a need to compare scars and grin with bloody teeth. It's part of the game, part of _coming _back from the battlefield, of grounding yourself back into reality. The adrenaline will have to spend itself somehow, burn out somewhere else before the killing edge is lost. It never _fades _on its own, never stutters out. Shepard understands it well enough, can't quite tell where his own recent history factors into this, but he likes to think he has more control than that — evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

But he has found people always easy anyway. Their motives are mostly transparent, their decisions writing themselves on their faces even as they make them. They are malleable, only looking for someone to tell them what to think, where to look and who to be. He has been like that, too, once. He remembers the Alliance recruitment poster, where seeing it and walking into the office had been almost the same thing. Inevitable. For no other reason than the promise that _this_ meant he wouldn't have to die some insignificant death in a back alley with a dull, dirty knife buried in his gut. Such a life — and such a death — was not going to be his. He could marvel at the arrogance of that young thug, but he couldn't well question his success.

He smiles back at her when she wants it, keeps eye-contact and buys them drinks. It's easy, flattering her. None of that shit about _lovely eyes _or _a beautiful smile. _She wants to be told that taking down two turians in hand-to-hand combat is a feat, that taking off a salarian's horn as a warning shot is both impressive and clever. He listens to her description of some raid she's been part in and chuckles darkly about thermal clips rigged to explode and used as make-shift grenades.

She has seen her share, he can tell and she is skilled enough, fast and clever enough, to make it this far, but despite all that, she isn't _interesting _to him. But she is there, amiable and pliant enough. Willing.

She says, "So, I got a room not far from here. You want to come over for the night?"

In the end, he supposes, soldiers back from the fray are never difficult. He doesn't feel like being an exception.

* * *

The asari's room is small, not cleaned since the last dozen inhabitants, or since the Protheans moved out. There is the whiff of drugs in the air, red sand and others he can't quite name, cheap alcohol, dried sweat and old blood. Ventilation clatters irregularly above them, does little to clear the air. The asari's damaged hardsuit occupies a corner, looming in the twilight of a lamp flickers with low power. She drags him into the room, hand twisted into the collar of his jacket, pushes him against the door as it closes. Kisses him hard, sloppy.

They pull and tear at alien clothing to get rough hands to alien skin. They stumble across the small space between the door and the bed. She hits the edge with the back of her legs, snarls against his mouth, then laughs. "Sorry," she says. "Didn't think I'd be having a guest. Thought I'd only be crashing out drunk anyway."

She brings him around, trips him back into the bed, climbs after him.

"Good enough for me," he says, matches her tone. Isn't nearly as drunk as she is.

Clothes shed, she leans into his touch easily, moans and arches into his finger, says, "Not your first asari, am I?"

"No."

He snakes an arm around her neck, pulls her down above him, grips her hips with the other. "Do you mind?" he adds, playful smirk painted across his face. He knows there is enough left of his fading, cybernetic scarring, enough so she trails a hand down the side of his face, short nails tracing the marks. Blue flares in the wake of her touch, shoots down through his cheek and he's left breathless.

She chuckles, "Show me what you can do."

Sparkles again, all along his body. Pinpricks of sensation following her touch, burying underneath, flooding his very bones.

Part of him has always hated how this made him feel, too goddamn _good, _this melding of spirits, all nerve-ends coming alive. Compared to this, all other sensations, all other _experience _pales. It means nothing at all. He understands Morinth well enough, this addiction of hers, what this would give her, when she is so much stronger, so much fiercer than any of these unremarkable asari. There is effort, jarring, pulsing pleasure that lures him to just _let go. _It asks a surrender, of control and promises something infinite if only he would let himself fall.

He grips her tighter, kisses her back and his teeth sheer across her lip and draw blood when he rolls them both around, a graceful, levered motion on the narrow bed. She tastes different, drops falling from his teeth and she laughs. He grazes his teeth along her jaw, doesn't bother to be careful this late in the game.

"My mind's my own," he tells her.

She's struggling, he can tell, the connection already blossoming on its own, but hacks her nails down in his back, draws them down. "Sure," she finally forces out and the connection fades slowly, reluctantly. "But get moving, stranger."

Asari. Looking like human women, but there is nothing really human about them, nothing _familiar. _Part of their appeal, he supposes. Exotic game and all that. Her body _feels_ alien. Different heat against and around him, different, flexing muscles. More responsive than humans, easier to play like an instrument. She arches her back, wraps her legs around his waist. Catches his gaze as her eyes fill with darkness.

It's stale, spikes of gratification at each thrust, but no thrill, no texture, no fire. He lifts his hand to her face, smears the blood from her split lip along the side of her jaw. Open-mouthed, she laughs again, throws her head back against his fingers, paints a streak of dark on the smooth, fascinating cerulean of her skin.

He has been falling for a very long time and the crash is so very long overdue.

It does not, after all, take too much. He shifts his grip on her only slightly, feels her writhe into the touch at first, her body becoming even hotter where she squeezes around him. His fingers find a proper grip around her throat, caress her for a moment, long enough to make her shudder and tilt her head back as far as it can go, exposing herself like this, far too inviting to resist. He closes his grip, hard.

She bucks under him in a pleasant, rippling motion that lets her whole body vibrate and the pleasure tips into a sharp spark of pain for both of them — there is always some connection with asari, no matter how much they try to hold back. There is always a breaking point, when the need to _meld _and _join _becomes too strong to fight. It goes too deep, this instinct. He should scoff at the invasion of privacy and throw her back onto herself — it's not like he hasn't learned anything from Liara, after all — but this time, the sensation is both new and fascinatingly familiar. She realises, on some subconscious level how her air is running out, how it wasn't going to last and how there wasn't going to be another breath at all. It lashes back at him like a bad memory, something better off forgotten, too close to fear and bitter as any defeat. Now, though, the suffocation filtered through her mind has a different texture, when it won't be his own death he has to face.

He presses tighter and her body shudders again. He digs the fingers of his other hand into her hip, feels the resistance of bones there, stops just short of breaking them and thrusts hard into her. Her thoughts scatter with the impact and he does it again before they can begin to reform. There is no reason to stop after that.

The asari is a battle-hardened warrior, though, and the shock and white hot pain-pleasure won't hold her down. She drives her nails into the arm at her throat, scrabbling to free herself from the choking agony, but she lets up, realising the futility of it. She rams her hand into his chest and a biotic blast pushes him back a fraction. She hasn't mustered enough strength to push him off completely, only a tiny sound hissed past her constricted throat.

Her whole body flares up with wisps of blue, building up pressure against him, making movement difficult. He stills instead, buried as deeply inside her as he can possibly go. He pins her hips down, holds them both still until he feels the fight going out of her slowly. Her biotics still flare around them, whispering along his skin, struggling for a hold, a hook with which to free herself, but she cannot grip him when he's inside her and her concentration doesn't hold against the force of his body.

He once died of asphyxiation. The sensations feeding back to him are the same, remembered agony, pain and panicked breathing for as long as it could possibly last, knowing all the while that _it would not _and the crushing silence of infinity, all of space spreading out around him. But this is different, neither his fear nor his pain, it's just an echo, beating at the back of his mind on cresting waves. _This _pain has a different taste, _this _suffering is delicious. _This_ time, he is the one in control and it makes for a heady combination. He has defied death often enough, it neither rouses nor impresses him any longer, but he has not faced this dying again, hasn't had a chance to try and stare it down. He stops breathing, too, for a moment when she finally does, because he _can, _because it's a choice he has the power to make. The asari's body locks up, cramping in death or rapture or both. Their connection lights up between them, bright and sharp, overheated in his mind and his nerves sting and sizzle, then it tears, slowly like ripping skin. He growls low in his throat, the sound of an animal even to his own ears.

A silent scream beats in his mind, the backlash of her dying flaring halo-bright, shooting back through their fused nerves with so much more force than he could have imagined. It breaks his own power, his rhythm stuttering as white-heat filling his vision before it dips into darkness. He shares her dying — _again — _feels her go under and the cold coming in, freezing him in place above her.

It takes effort to move, to relax his muscles — never hurt like this before, doesn't seem to be making sense — to clear his vision. Has to blink a few times to do it, difficult to sort out sensation in his mind. The asari has gone limp, still with the sick, lingering heat of pulsing life and soaked arousal. Her eyes are wide on him, empty and pitch-black, deep enough to get lost in.

He snaps away from her, suddenly incapable to bear touching her any longer. He stands away from her, still breathing hard — harder than he can remember and it takes longer until it begin to even out. It's freezing with the cool-down, unrelenting air against his naked skin, carving into him like razors.

He doesn't look at the asari, has no desire to figure out why this might be so. She is sprawled out wantonly on the bed, motionless and ravished. Unexpected disgust closes his throat and he catches himself on an unfamiliar line of thought, wondering how to hide this, how to cover it up, so the galaxy might never know _this _about him. It's an odd thought, utterly alien for a man of his track record. He's never cared for what anyone thought, doesn't waste time on gossip or rumour. His reputation, good or bad, it's none of his business at all. He will do as he wants, or as he must, and let those who think themselves worthy be the judge.

So this is the line, he thinks, not Torfan, not Bahak. Just an _unremarkable_ asari and the way she's died.

How unremarkable, he adds, trivial. Something he has never been, never _wanted _to be, or thought himself capable of.

He stands there, listening to his own heartbeat, breathing the badly filtered Omega air. Every breath is precious, even here, but he has always known that. He stands and his breathing slows and the memory of dying turns in his head. His death. _Hers. _Cerberus had forgotten more than just a scar and two tattoos when they brought him back. He has been human only until he died.

He flexes his neck and shoulders, strength flowing back in his limbs, like afterglow. Once the border is crossed, there is no reason left for vertigo.

This is Omega. There are worse things happening everywhere right now and no one cares.

He goes to take a shower, leaves the dead asari where she is. He'll let Aria handle this, no doubt she will enjoy thinking him in her debt.

* * *

Morinth finds Omega newly distasteful. Boring and bland, its dangers nothing compared to where she has been, who has known and what she has done. The mercs have no sting, the dreary lowlife in this place offers no attraction. She secures herself an apartment, but she does not intend to stay long.

Then she goes to book herself passage away from this dead rock. Any direction will do, any destination. She feels oddly exposed, being this lone hunter again, now that there is no one there any longer to watch her back. No one who might be willing to catch her if she slips up, no one at all to play with, no one _worthy _at any rate. It's not what she wants, not what she _needs _either.

She stands outside a black-market trader's seedy office and takes a deep breath of the vile air around her. It will be good to leave all this behind, find some greener pastures somewhere else. Maybe she has forgotten who she is, it will take some time until she can regain all of that. Shepard has left her, thrown her back into the chaos where he once found her, a victim left by the wayside, disregarded and meaningless, the way she did with all her past lovers. Perhaps he should have killed her, she thinks, to lend symmetry to both their existence.

Her omni-tool announces a message, send anonymously, but when she opens it, she is instantly at peace with so many things. She opens the picture that accompanies the message, lets it paint itself with blazing lights into the gloom around her.

It's a titillating image if ever she has seen one. An asari, strong-limbed and smooth-muscled, spread out on a bed soiled by the glistening fluids slowly leaking from her slackened body. The angle is blatant, leaving very little to the imagination. Purple imprints of a hand mark the asari's slender neck and her head is tilted back, mouth opened in a unvoiced scream. Morinth imagines the sound she would have tried to make, then, of death and utter, hopeless bliss. Her eyes are a perfect black.

The message itself is short, but oh so sweet.

_Wish you were here. — S_

Morinth stores the image away, suddenly content in the storm she feels gathering all around them.

She contemplates for a long minute what option she has left, what choices she might be able to make, but in truth, the decision is quite easy. She cannot quite comprehend how she ever entertained other options at all. She regrets walking away, but she knows her time on the Normandy has always been finite.

She turns around on her heels, returns to the trader, arranges passage to Earth.

She will keep an eye on Shepard as well she can, watch him from afar as if he was still her prospective prey; she'll watch _over _him like the lover she cannot quite be.

Shepard will be set free again, she knows. The Reapers will come with all their destruction and they will vindicate him, proof him _right, _once and for all. Shepard has always been great, but the Reapers will exalt him so much further.

Among the flames and ruins left in the wake of his victory, she will find his side again.

* * *

**End of _Rubicon_**

* * *

**Author's Note:** It seems the sex comes with the territory, this probably surprises me most of all. I don't usually write this sort of thing. Unfortunately, ME3 has blown two additional chapters out of the water and the softcore is much of what I've left. Besides, I did need to somehow tie this into where ME3 takes off. Conclusion is postponed until Bioware gets their act together. So, summer.

I've debated whether to include this chapter or not, but this (my) Shepard seems to be liked well enough and I rather like how it's turned out. I've been writing versions of this chapter for a long while, changed and adapted it. It dates back to an exchange all the way back in 'In Flames'. I figured it was time Morinth has some influence on Shepard and not just the other way around.

Feedback, as always, very welcome.


	8. Battlespaces

**— Battlespaces —**

* * *

**[THREE]**

Morinth sits in the gaping frame of a broken window and looks out over the smouldering, smoking city. In weeks and months to come, she is sure she will learn to fear such exposed places, but the Reaper threat has been real for her for a long time, seeing their devastation first hand seems too much like a vindication to flee the sight just yet.

She has been on Earth for weeks before this, hovering around the cafés and plazas of Vancouver, listening to news vids. At night, she had stalked the city, finding clubs and company and styles of music she had never heard before. She has always found that there was something different about a species' homeworld, their air had a different texture, their soil a different history. On a homeworld, the very essence of what a people are is seeped into the ground, the fabric of existence. This was where they had dragged themselves from some primordial mud so they would claim the stars.

Moreover, this is _Shepard'_s homeworld. He has been born here, learned to fight in streets not much different than these.

She cannot blame the Reapers for coming here, for hunting him this far. How terrifying it must be for a species so superior, who have gone undefeated for tens of thousands of years? To come to a place with the the force of that power and then find yourself thwarted?

"Energy drink?"

A can pushes itself into her field of vision, dangling dangerously from three long fingers. Janis.

Morinth follows the hand up the athletic, long arm and edged shoulders. She musters a smile, half-fake only. Something sad there that she cannot quite name yet. Something had ended when the Reapers came to Earth, irrevocably and the power the thought holds has her in its grasp. Her soul is too close to art and savagery not to appreciate it.

Pockets of resistance have sprung up everywhere on Earth. Although the Reapers came swiftly and devastatingly, even they cannot conquer a planet in mere moments. So there is a kind of hope still lingering about these people. Morinth has had no time to pick a group, to try and find even Shepard in the chaos. For all she knows, he might be dead already, buried under the tons of rubble Alliance HQ has been reduced to. It is barely an academic thought. Shepard would appreciate the irony of dying like that, but neither of them truly ever believed the possibility.

"Thank you," Morinth says as she reaches for the can. Supplies will be a problem soon, but there are signs of organisation by now, hints that the resistance groups are finding each other in the dark ruins of their homes.

Morinth loves Janis the moment she sees her. Tall and slim, Janis carries herself with utter confidence and a laid-back sort of calm that diffuses panic wherever she goes. No one knows where she has come from. She is no military and no police. Morinth has her tagged as the muscle of some criminal organisation or other, but these labels matter little anymore.

"What's your story, then?" Janis asks and settles herself into the open window next to Morinth. Morning light crawls sluggishly through the smoke in cool silver and white, casting soft shadows over the jagged and gutted corpses of skyscrapers.

Morinth hesitates. "There is little to tell."

"Yeah right," Janis snorts, pushes a strand of bright red hair from her face. She gestures with her own can, back the way she's come from, to the cellar below them that currently houses their ragtag group of survivors. "Everyone has a story," Janis points out. "Most of us have stories we don't like to share. _But _it's save to say, we are in this shit together and, boy, _shit _doesn't seem to begin to cover it." She looks out over the city. "Makes me wonder, you know? About what this Shepard guy said all those years ago? Should have listened to him, eh?"

"It seems so," Morinth says, noncommittally.

She feels Janis' gaze as it returns to her, to what would be visible of Morinth's profile past the crumbling wall. "What I'm saying is this, I really wanna know who's gonna stand next to me with a gun. If you are gonna bolt or not, for one thing. There is no shame in that, just saying, these buggers are mighty scary. But I wanna know _beforehand." _

"I'm not bolting," Morinth says.

"I think so, too," Janis points out. "You look like you've seen your share of fighting. You commando or something? Merc? Assassin?"

Despite herself, Morinth has to laugh. "A little bit of all," she finally admits.

She can tell she doesn't convince Janis, but the woman understands the value of secrets and is willing to let her keep hers. It doesn't matter who she was before the Reapers, not beyond the skills that life might have left her with. There was no other truth left, only survival.

"Don't stay up here too long, they don't need the target practice," Janis says as she regains her feet. There is something careless and casual about how she does it, the natural grace of someone who, in her own way, has always been meant to be exactly where she is. People who seem to be brought into the world for just this fight.

Morinth watches Janis as she leaves, trailing cigarette smoke after her like an invitation.

* * *

**[TWO]**

It takes days — not weeks, not months, not years — for the Reapers to reduce the great metropolises of Earth into fields of rubble. Sending its inhabitants scampering into the countryside like vermin. Those who don't make it out in time are killed by the Reapers or, what is worse, cooped into concentration camps where they are slowly indoctrinated to feed the endless stream of husks that spills from the cities after the survivors in an unstoppable avalanche.

Morinth has been in fights before, some of them heartbreaking in the beauty of their deadliness and some of them so brutal they shatter the soul, but nothing she has seen has prepared her for this. There is no _respite, _no pause in the fighting. The hordes of husks simply keep coming and behind them the ever changing monstrosities the Reapers have brought with them.

Their _allies_, horrendously twisted, flesh reshaped into murderous nightmares that stalk all of them far off the battlefields.

It is not the worst.

She dreams of them for many nights before she sees them the first time. The soldiers call them _Banshees_, some Earth myth given substance and a voice, earning the name. The others are afraid of them, more so even than of any of the others. Banshees are fast and nigh unstoppable and their scream cuts deeper still. They are more for Morinth, for she knows what they are, what they _have been _in a life now lost and forgotten. They are her sisters, all of them, carved from the same material as she is.

They haunt her sleep, for in the same way she recognises them, they know of her, too. They feel her and they hunger for her.

She has played with fear before. A little spice in her life, fear has been sometimes. There is no thrill without the threat of failure, after all, no pleasure without the hints of pain. _This _fear is different. It rends her apart from the inside out, it petrifies her, makes her weak like the little girl she has never been. It becomes _so _hard to do her part. To leave the shelter and face the fights when she knows one of _them _might be there and she would be seeking out Morinth among all the other fighters.

Morinth tries not to contemplate what will happen when she misses a step — and she knows the time will come — when she makes a mistake, a tiny, crucial error. Everyone is dying. Morinth knows she is no exception. They sustain themselves on false hope and wilful blindness. In the end, there is a death waiting for each of them and only the shape it takes might be different.

The Banshee's thoughts wrap around her mind when she sleeps. They call her in seductive whispers she an scarcely remember with waking, but they follow her through the day. There is always _something _there, just outside of hearing, just beyond where she can see them coming.

Looking deep inside herself, she finds a part of her that _wants _to go to them. It will be the ultimate test, the last and final proof of whether she is truly who she has always meant to be. She needs to stand up to them, face them, because they are not her equal at all. They will exalt her, a queen and a goddess, not this insignificant insect.

When she concentrates, she knows not to trust that voice. She cannot tell if it's indoctrination or if it's just a special bond she has with the Banshees, who are her sisters and who are so immensely more powerful than any asari has ever been.

A heavy thud forces her from her thoughts and she turns her head to find Janis slumped at her side. Time and the war have taken their toll on her. The skin on her face is dry and flaky, the rings are deep and dark under her eyes. Her hair hasn't been washed recently and she wears it pulled back in a skewed ponytail. None of them look much better. Supplies are a problem, but time and leisure are the real issue. They barely sit still long enough to sleep. They eat while walking or running or fighting.

"Something's been eating you," Janis observes.

"Something," Morinth replies dryly. She cannot muster the strength to put much irony in her voice.

Janis doesn't seem impressed. "If that's how you wanna to play it. I'm just going to paint you a little picture. When you joined us, you were amazing. Tossing husks around with your biotics, hitting any target right between the eyes. Always on the frontline and I get it, you don't give much of a shit about us, but you are _good _and somehow you think you need to do your part. Good on us, I thought then."

"What changed?" Morinth asks, but she knows the answers. The Banshees have found them. She wonders if Janis knows that there is a group of them, following them for weeks. Contact with other cells of the Resistance is difficult, but not impossible. _Some _coordination happens, _some _exchange. Enough for Janis to figure out that things are different for them.

"That's what I'm asking," Janis points out. "For a while now you've been cringing at every sound, barely sticking your head out of cover, all that."

Morinth sits forward, hands dangling from her knees and examines the cracked floor beneath her feet. It's too easy to confide in Janis and the impeccable, rough-and-ready leadership. In this world, where every stranger can be a brain-washed traitor it would be so easy to fall prey to paranoia, doing the Reapers works for them, but Janis keeps her head cool and her gun close. No one wants to cross her without having a good reason or solid proof.

"I haven't been sleeping well," Morinth finally says. It's true enough, she supposes.

She feels Janis' gaze on her, utterly steady and capable to peel away all the layers of deception Morinth has assembled over the years. And there, then, is the difference. Shepard does not care for her lies, does not question her. He simply takes and accepts, even as a leader. You lived up to his expectation or you did not, but he has no need to pry.

Then again, Janis simply might no longer have the luxury of such tact.

"Fair enough," Janis says finally, letting her go. "If you've lost stomach, that's understandable. It'd be a pity, but not a whole anyone can do about that. I'll find you something else to do. Maybe training the civilians, you think you can do that?"

Morinth narrows her eyes. Janis is right, probably. It will keep her out of sight of the Banshees, as safe as anyone can be on this planet. At the same time, it tastes defeat.

Morinth takes a deep breath and sits up to face Janis. "These Banshees used to be asari like me. I hear them in my head. They are coming for me."

She can tell Janis has not expected to hear that, or to be offered such honesty. She isn't the only one, but perhaps things have to change if they mean to survive. Or, because Morinth no longer believes in survival, if they mean to make it to the very end. She needs to do that, she remembers, she needs to _see the end. _

"So you're trying to hide?" Janis asks, pulling an eyebrow up.

For a moment there is no answer, only emptiness.

"So it seems," Morinth observes.

Janis keeps looking at her. "_Seems _to me you can either keep trying to hide — good luck with that in a full-blown invasion — or you go out there and kick some ass." She makes a dismissive gesture with one hand. "They brainwash you, or whatever, I'll have a bullet reserved for you. That a deal?"

"Yes," Morinth says and feels more like herself than she has in a long while.

* * *

**[ONE]**

When she sees Shepard again it's in a badly damaged recording brought to them by a messenger from another group. Messengers are the solution to the Reapers' jamming technology. People skilled enough and bold or mad enough to brave the wide world on their own, sneaking through enemy lines. They are already regarded as something more than mortal, the true heroes of the war on Earth, the only connection between each tiny, struggling Resistance cell.

One of the most coveted news are the recordings from the Normandy.

They have stopped for a few days in an old bunker. It seems to have been about to be converted into a museum, but the building was never finished and none of the workers were still there. Despite the work already done, the bunker was solid, deep enough underground to be hidden from casual scans. With any luck, the Reapers will not find them here for a little while, giving them all a moment to breathe.

Tonight, everyone is cramped into one of the rooms in front of a screen, passing energy drinks and bars around. Someone has found cigarettes in a lost locker and Janis understands smoking well enough to allow it, if only this once, for the celebration that each new episode of _Battlespace_ brings.

The quality of the image is bad and sound lags behind a split second. That is all there is, all she needs. Or any of them.

She remembers Shepard, the way he seemed to have been carved from diamond or ice, flawless and perfect, a force of nature. Undefeated. Immortal. This is the man the Reapers have gone to war against. This was who they must beat if they meant to see tomorrow. Shepard was the challenge, not the other way around at all.

Except this Shepard is changed. He has never been soft, but he has became sharper in the months of the war, his cheeks seem hollower and the shadows paint the bones of his face in uncompromising contrast. Even in the distorted image, Morinth can see the lines as they dig deeper around his eyes and mouth. He keeps his deep voice emotionless as he speaks, professional. Meaningless.

There is something ragged about him now, like the edges of shattered bones breaking through skin. In another life she would have called it weakness and she would have felt nothing but contempt. But this is not another life. What she sees, there on that screen, is Shepard as he burns. As he takes all his unmitigated brilliance and sets it to blaze across the galaxy.

Shepard brings an end to the Genophage and a thresher maw devours a Reaper. The vid alone, Morinth thinks, fuelled the Resistance for weeks in every battle. Shepard resolves a three-hundred year old war and at the end of it, he has the greatest fleet in the galaxy and the geth at his beck and call.

Her heart tears, just seeing it all. Not his triumphs, because she knows the texture of them already. It is his defeats that fascinate her more. The way he handles it, the way it makes him seem even more majestic.

The journalists face flares into the image and the recordings briefly loses its image completely before she returns. A woman with a pretty face and hungry eyes, Morinth likes to think of her as someone she would toy with, if this were another life. Even now, it is easy to imagine events as they unfold, when the camera and its lights have gone out.

She knows Shepard in the bedroom, his preferences and tastes, how he likes to see people's faces, how he never — never truly — relinquishes control. He is confident enough to be sensual, but too strong to be anything but dominating.

This Shepard she does not know. He is a harsher creature, honed in this greatest of wars. Both impatient and intense.

_Shepard pushes her back into the fish-tank, caught between the unrelenting glass and his hard body. He slides a hand down her body and pushes aside the leathery fabric of her dress. She writhes on his long fingers in what little space remains her, lets her head fall back and into the glass, exposing her vulnerable throat to his teeth and …_

"It's Shepard, isn't it?" Janis asks and sits down by her side. The vid is over and the other soldiers have already began filing out of the room, back to their duties and their waiting deaths.

Janis shrugs and gestures with her arm. She holds a burning cigarette and her movement trails a thin line of smoke. "Can't blame you. It's probably Shepard for most of these guys, too. Whatever gets them through the day. Or the night or whatever alone time they can manage. I ain't no judge."

Morinth tilts her head and watches Janis, smiles. "You always come to talk to me. I like it."

Janis waves her off. "I talk to everyone. Keeps morale from rock-bottoming more than it already does." She points with the glowing tip of the cigarette towards the screen. "I remember when they made him Spectre. Saw the vids, of course, who didn't? You know what I thought? I thought he got the job because the Alliance wanted to slap his pretty face on a recruitment poster."

Morinth makes no answer, only watches Janis' face as she talks and the limp, casual way she gestures with the cigarette. She takes a long drag and leans forward, rests her arms on the chair in front of her and finally returns Morinth's silent scrutiny.

"Makes you wonder, doesn't it? What he's doing out there. Saving us and all that."

Another drag. "You know what I think now?" she asks.

"Tell me."

"If he were even _half_ as good as they say," Janis says. "The Reapers would be dust by now. But they aren't. Not last time I checked. So what's that mean? Where is it gonna end?"

Morinth thinks of her sisters, roaming the night, just outside their hideout, searching for an opening, a tiny fissure to squeeze through. Into the bunker or into her mind, it makes no difference.

And she thinks of Shepard and the myth he has created and the legend he has become. For a moment it is incomprehensible it imagine Shepard as anything _less, _to think that anyone can disregard him as easily as Janis' has done. But this is not the battle Morinth will have to fight. Shepard stands alone and his worth is only his enemies' to judge.

In her mind _Shepard pins Diana's wrists above her head with one hand, leaving a smudge of her own juices on the cool glass._

"It means there won't be a saviour," Morinth answers. Only the war and those who fight it, those who die every day on every world in the galaxy. Because Shepard will tear them all down, if that is what it takes.

Janis nods slowly. She puts her head down on her hands and smiles. "Exactly. Just us. The foot soldiers in the dirt, fighting the good fight. It's good to see you back on your feet. You had me worried for a bit."

In her mind _Diana wraps her legs around Shepard's waist, heels digging into the backs of his thigh and the undulating muscles of his ass _and Janis gives her a slow smile.

"I'm always fine," Morinth says. Her skin tingles with Janis' proximity. There is an empty chair between them, but the space shrinks as Janis' smile spreads to reach her eyes and leave a mischievous glitter there.

"You know," Janis begins. "You never did tell me your story."

Morinth puts her head to the side and the room tilts with the changed perspective. Biotics crackle across her body for no more than an instant, a show of power and the whisper of a connection. Janis lifts an inquisitive eyebrow at the display.

"I don't know yours either," Morinth replies.

In her mind _Diana arches her back off the glass, shuddering. Her mouth opens in a scream made hoarse by moans. _

Janis carelessly flicks ashes from her cigarette to the floor and the butt flares up brightly for a moment. She shrugs. "Well," she observes. "Do you mind?"

Morinth has been watching herself for so long, since before coming to Earth. Each tiny movement choreographed, each word weighed, each expression calculated. She has been wearing her mother's face on the Normandy and she has been hiding even in the war zones. Only her sisters, abominations prowling just outside even now, only they know her for what she is.

Shepard is unique — _a low groan past lips slashed in a rare, secret, naked, hungry smile _— but he is far away, gone from her grasp as surely as anything _lost_ has ever been. Perhaps it is the only truth she shall ever know. Shepard is lost to her.

It is Janis who makes to last move, the only damning one she could make. The surrender she doesn't know she offers. She knows nothing of what she covets, has no understanding of the danger or the bliss. She curls a hand around Morinth's neck and leans in for a kiss.

The rickety chairs scrape on the rough concrete of the floor with the movement, their perfect line breaking.

Janis _takes, _her tongue invasive and mobile, the grip on her neck turns to steel and Morinth allows herself to melt into the touch. She luxuriates in the feel of soft lips and the texture of an alien tongue filling her mouth, the pressure of lips and the hard edges of teeth just a fraction from clashing, before Janis draws back a fraction only to sink them into Morinth's lower lip. She pulls her head back, flesh between her teeth, just far enough so she can catch Morinth's blackening gaze.

Janis purrs and Morinth tastes smoke and blood when the biotics come alive and all of Morinth's senses turn to the woman, whose grip is still strong, Morinth can feel every finger as it presses into her skin. She feel Janis' mind, all her history coming alive in a sensation. Everything she is, everything she has ever been laid bare like a disembowelled victim of the war. Ripe to be plucked and devoured in a moment of perfect bliss.

At the back of her head, Morinth hears her sisters scream with longing. They understand _nothing _of the hunt, they have no interest in their prey. They do not _love _and _lose. _They have never been in her shoes, have never seen with her eyes or tasted with her tongue. They are beneath her, worthless. They are fearsome, but they are also pathetic.

Morinth has seen the face of their destruction. They are _incapable _of frightening her.

The grip on her neck tightens and Janis whimpers, jaw unclenching with a click to release heavy, panting breath. Her thoughts are confused and lost, spread everywhere like shattered glass.

Morinth remembers the war and who she is fighting it for. Janis is a force, not strong enough to survive, but tempting enough to lure her nevertheless, make her stray from the path she has picked. With effort, she tears her hooks from Janis' mind and moans at the loss, feels the memories of another life trickle away from her grasp to waste away on their own.

Janis slumps against her, dazed. Her head comes to rest on Morinth's shoulder with weight and warmth, it almost makes her reach for her again.

Carefully, Morinth extracts herself from Janis' grip, arranges her on the chair by her side and takes a deep breath to steady herself. Even she, she thinks, will have to make sacrifices. This small part of the Resistance will not survive without Janis' leadership, without her bite and her streetwise cunning.

"I should have tried asari sooner," is the first thing Janis says as her senses return to her. She shifts downward in her chair and lets her head loll back. "What the hell was that?" she asks.

Morinth has no good answer to that, there is only a revelation, but she cannot share that. She leans close, draws in the woman's scent like a keepsake, if it is all she shall have from her.

"I have a favour to ask," Morinth says lowly.

Janis crinkles her brow. "Sure."

"Use me as a messenger," Morinth says. "Send me away."

The frown deepens and after another minute, Janis finally blinks the haze from her vision and as she focuses on Morinth, she seems clear enough.

"Why?"

"Because I'll survive it."

Janis shakes her head slowly. "What about the Banshees?" she asks, because she doesn't know just how close to death she has just been and that Morinth is trying to save them both.

"Yes," Morinth agrees. "I'll survive them, too."

* * *

**End of _Battlespaces_**

* * *

**Author's Note:** Janis intentionally resembles ME3's default female Shepard, because she's utterly gorgeous. In this vein, Janis is also someone who 'might' have become Shepard if the circumstances of her life had been different.

Yes, that's supposed to be a countdown. Counting down for the big bang, if I may say so myself. Let's hope it's not going to be one hell of a disappointing experience, seeing as endings are not this franchise's strong suit...

**Feedback?**


	9. Zero Hour

**Author's Note: **This, my dear friends, is it. I hope it pleases.

* * *

**— Zero Hour —**

* * *

Morinth learns to revel in newfound powers as the weeks unfold before her. She finds weapons where she can and discards them as they lose their usefulness. Only a small hunting knife becomes her sole companion. It has a short blade of midnight-dark metal, its edge expanding into an inch of searing heat at the slightest pressure of her fingers where they wrap around the knife's woven hilt as they would around a lover.

The knife shrinks the distance between her and her foes as she carves them to pieces. She _feels _the resistance as she cuts into them, dissecting the Reapers' work one strap at a time. She finds a certain beauty in it, in the end. After all, it is a kind of artistry to take a entire species and shape them into twisted, hopeless shades of their former selves. An ingenuity and a taste for cruelty she can appreciate. These are pieces of art, hunting her through the empty streets and open lands of Earth, made of flesh and nightmares. The true triumph of evolution, the last step for life to take before plunging into darkness.

She sees a mirror world in them, an alternative to existence as she knows it. There are batarians there, far more glorious now than their lost and ruined civilisation will allow for. What turian has ever been as victorious in any battle, what krogan as unstoppably powerful? The rachni have returned in hordes of splendour and even the asari now know the truth of themselves.

And yet, here she is, fighting on. She will prove to them all what she is made of. They will learn — the Reapers and the lost souls of her sisters and her mother's scornful memory — that she shall not succumb and break. She will not bent the knee to these new masters of her fate.

The fight is nearly done when the change comes and it takes her a moment to even notice. She hacks down into the shoulder of her enemy and vile blood spurts in her face. The Cannibal howls like one of her sisters, flails desperately, but is unable to stop her as its arm comes loose.

The sky pulses in a sickly orange, not unlike the omni-blade of her beloved hunting knife. It cause a ripple in the air, hurtling towards them, the fulfilment of a prophecy riding on the crest of a tsunami. Something pulls and tears in her heart and mind as it passes over her, setting her thoughts adrift on the wind.

The Cannibal goes limp in her hand, heavier than it would if it was merely dead. It transforms — though its outward appearance remains the same — it becomes something else. Not a corpse, but an empty shell of a future denied to it and its brethren. It pulls her down until she lets go, staggering in the wake of the wave.

It feels as if she has not taken a breath in _years. _She has not seen the world with these eyes for what it is, she has been asleep, lulled into an animal state of being, killing in the ruins, hunting but dying, too. For the first time in a long while, she can no longer hear her sisters. Their call has fallen silent and their memory is washed away. Only then does she perceive the brink to which she has been driven and understand the danger and the lure of it. She thought she was hunting her sisters to set them free when in truth, it was the other way around. It was them, coming for her to bring her into the fold and reshape her body according to the Reapers' needs.

Morinth finds a seat and sits, crouched on a pile of detritus and does nothing but breathe. It feels like hours, or maybe days, an eternity all its own. The sky is darkening above her, a heavy gunmetal grey with drifting swathes of smoke and ashes obscuring the view of distant stars and flecks of flaring explosions flickering and dying for nothing but her enjoyment. It is a fantasy, but a pleasant one and the display is no less resplendent because of it.

After a while, the explosions begin to fall around her as debris reaches the surface, still burning from the heat of entry. It makes little difference. There is nothing left of Earth and it's glorious, blood-soaked past or its desperate, blood-soaked present. Nothing left to be torn down, only scorched Earth and ruins shivering on their foundations with the impacts.

Tiny tremors travel through the soles of her feet and up her legs. It's like a touch all over her body and she savours it, lets the sensation flood her body and her very being.

Movement catches her eye and she snaps her head around to focus on it. For a moment she believes it a remnant survivor throwing its life away by attacking her, or perhaps it is just falling mortar creating the illusion of life. Deep in her heart she knows there are no enemies left here and the humans have long since deserted the area.

She is the last one standing.

But it is not an apparition, imagined or otherwise, although it might as well be. The shape of a man peels itself from the swirling dust, slow steps carrying him forward, laboured but deliberate with vestiges of strength and grace.

She recognises him before she even believes it, before her mind can begin to put the pieces of the puzzle together and comprehend the sheer impossibility of it. Here is Shepard walking towards her, the warrior-prophet of the galaxy's last great hope. The one idea they have clung to until the very end, the hope that was to be extinguished after all the others when the Reapers finally conquered.

He stops as he sees her and a gust of wind clears her vision as if she asked it to. Shepard's hardsuit is torn in a dozen places, his skin is blackened by fire and dirt and crusted blood. The cybernetic scars are all long gone, made to heal so he resembled a mortal man rather than an undying demon, but the skin has been torn from his cheek and laid bare the lattice of wires to catch the light as he tilts his head to regard her.

Morinth watches him as he begins walking again, as each step brings him closer to her and reveals the extension of the damage done to his body, the bruises and open wounds. He looks like he has died again. Died and once more it simply wouldn't take. Blood covers the other side of his face, drips from a cut below his eye like tears as they trail down, an outline, tracing the shape of a cheekbone to the broken corner of his mouth.

It is incredible that they should find each other again like this. These shooting stars have brought him back to her or perhaps they are both dead after all and this is the afterlife, willing to take her even though she has never believed in it. But this last is such an _academic_ thought without weight or meaning, powerless in his presence and hers.

She stands on her perch to gaze down on him, feeling like a bird-of-prey and she entertains the thought of falling on him from on high, tearing him down with her in the dust, to take him as her own once and for all. She climbs down and prowls towards him in the open square between them among cracked concrete and dismembered, disembowelled husks. She meets him halfway and they fall on each other instead.

Their mouths crash together in a kiss that is a bite, broken lips and edged teeth and hot, twisting tongues. Shepard curls a hand around her neck, fingers digging into her skull, and pulls her against him. She has ordered him to kiss her once, and she thinks he has neither forgotten nor forgiven that. But she has been wrong about something all along, the tastes she hated so much, the ones that obscured him from her grasp — the smoke, the alcohol, another's fluids, the blood — they are expressions of him, variants, foils. She should have known, because it is her game, how masks reveal just as much about the man underneath as the reality of him.

Her armour is battered, reliable enough to withstand the clumsy lunges of husks, who are almost dead by the time they reach her, but it has little resistance to offer Shepard. It tears loose easily, synthetic plating and soft fibre parting under his finger. The air is cool on her skin as it is exposed, the dust acrid and biting, the caress of razors, amplifying every sensation and every contrast between hot and cold, harsh and soft.

Shepard's broken hardsuit is a different matter. It's deformed, fastenings jammed out of shape, molten into patches. The soft padding underneath has fused into his skin all along his spine, it makes him hiss and snarl as she pulls free what she can. His skin is fever-hot from malfunctioning implants and uneven under her prying fingers and barbed nails.

Part of her realises he is dying under her grip even now, his body beginning to fail, but somehow it makes no difference. If it changes anything at all, it is that he has come to her in the end in the fulfilment of a promise she thought he has denied her.

Shepard wraps an arm around her waist, drags her against him, edges of his chestplate digging into her bared skin and she winces and wails and laughs like the goddess she is as they fall. She is crushed under his weight, pointed shards digging into her back, tearing her open like the lick of whiplashes as she scrapes on the ground.

Her power crackles around her, charging the air in a thunderstorm atmosphere. She senses him with more than her body, tastes him with more than her tongue; she spreads her legs wide around him and then draws him in. He has shifted his hold on her, dragged his hands down her exposed flanks to hold her hips and angle them.

She puts her hands around his shoulders, claws his neck and frees tatters of skin. He hates it when people hold his head, a gesture of mastery and submission she has never seen him accept before now. It brings them face to face in a moment of perfect stillness. His eyes are bloodshot, but bright and piercing in the dark frames of bruises and mixed blood and dirt. There is nothing _lost_ in his gaze at all, no fear and no uncertainty. She has been afraid this life would break him, but it has succeeded only in laying bare the indomitable core.

For too long she was forced to hold back, veil herself in deceptions of one kind or another. For too long she has denied herself who and what she is. She has allowed herself to be caged in the twilight of her own power. She has been playing until now. Her biotics flare bright and consuming, unmitigated for the first time — the first time that _counts _— and it's a beautiful sight, blindingly bright in her eyes and fills her entire body, it ties her to Shepard with ropes made of nothing but forces of will and desire.

The fight before has left her on edge, the feeling of tearing flesh at the end of her hunting knife causing a different hunger in her, arousal both in the basest way and the most transcendental. Things happen simultaneously, piled on each other in nothing but a tiny slither of time. Shepard sheathes himself in her body in a long, hard slide and her biotics dance and pull tight. There is no slow easing in, no building up; one moment they are separate and unique and than they are one, nerves joined and blazing in white-blue power.

Shepard chokes on his own scream as his breathing cuts out and his heart beats madly in his chest. His whole body goes rigid, pulled too tense. His grip on her cramps but his muscles fail and he collapses into her, unable to hold his own weight.

The first thing that hits her is the pain. After all, she feels what he feels, and his body is a mess of overstrained muscles, ripped tissue and cracking bones. He is riddled with gaping wounds and blistering burns have eaten deep into his flesh.

Then the circle closes, the sensations realign themselves and transform into something greater than their components. Shepard turns his head just far enough to drag his teeth along her jaw. He pulls himself up, giving a slow, deep roll of his hips in perfect, solid friction inside her. His breath rasps in his throat and she feels the vibration as well as hears it.

_"More," _he says into her skin and the rhythm changes.

The ground of a dead planet chafes at her back, shards burying in her flesh as every hard, powerful thrust moves them both.

Shepard growls and hisses by her ear, as if he has shed millennia upon millennia of civilisation and evolution, stripped down to the primordial hunter feasting. He sinks his teeth into her neck, deeply and unrelentingly, until he draws blood. She feels it hot and wet between them, the bittersweet sting of pain and the scorching flash of relief.

Morinth hacks her nails into his back, slices into his skin, carves out his shoulder-blades to make him arch his back and beat harder into her. The sensory feedback mounts and overloads, feeds the pleasure into its intensity until it begins to tip and spiral into pain and further still. Burning rapture-agony, exalting dying to the taste of diamond dust and gore and scattered weapons, here in the ruins of all their worlds and at the end of all things.

She remembers the black oceans of his mind and she hurls herself forward, desperate to plunge into it. She has been waiting for it for so long, she's come such a long way just for this. There is no resistance, Shepard's mind is thrown wide open, his soul laid bare for her to take.

And the stormy seas of her longed for memory have turned to tar. Slow, consuming, _dead. _The rage has all been spent, the monsters and myths she has imagined are all gone, wasted and burned and used up along the way. There is nothing left of the man she fell in love with, only the scarred, pockmarked surface of his corpse. _This _she cannot dominate.

Distantly, from inside her mind and his, she hears a dry, rattling laugh. Shepard pulls back from her just slightly, leaving deep bruises on her thighs as he rearranges her, hoists her legs over his shoulders and holds her poised, gaping open and drenched. She wants to beg him then, in this instant of deprivation, but she won't. _Never _has become a feeble word, but she will _never _beg him. She howls as he enters her again and goes so much further than before.

It hurts and she loves it, loves _him, _for the matching fury of their shared magnificence, the glory of who they are and why they are still alive. For, in not killing him, a new path as opened for her. A future none of her kind has ever had. Not the sisters she lost centuries ago to her mother's creed and not the sisters she lost to the Reapers' hopeless invasion.

In the devouring pitchblack death of Shepard's mind, her thoughts can chase the twisted rope of his very being, all the foundations of his potential for her to take as her own. The very beginning of the most extraordinary being since the beginning of history and she can take that small part of him and carry it into the future. _His _daughter and the daughter of an Ardat-Yakshi… the thought leaves her euphoric, greedy and disbelieving and shuddering in his arms.

If she means to kill him now, she will have to carve him into shreds with her hunting knife, but _this_ she can still take from him, with or without his consent. He wouldn't even need to know. Only he _does _and it binds her beyond any hope of escape.

It is his rejection that picks her up and tosses her into an abyss of utter ecstasy. The very force of his willpower as it slams into her with abrading friction, shattering them both until there is nothing left but dust and sensation and all-consuming pleasure erupting into perfect, ravaging release. It _lasts _as it spins her out of her own mind, her thoughts cast adrift and dissolving.

Shepard leans over her, driving her into the fractured ground, her very bones straining and tethering, nerve-ends melting. His voice joins her in a low-pitched, beating crescendo of maddening bliss. He lurches to a halt and stays there, buried in the overheated depth of her body and their thoughts, their very _being_ inextricably merged.

Shepard yanks her upward, her legs fall away from his shoulders to wrap around his waist once again. He leaves her floundering in vertigo, but with her eyes wide on his, intense and unwavering while everything else spins. He grinds his hips into her, moving slower now with the first frenzy spent.

_"Again," _she says.

* * *

The air is cool, but surprisingly soft on damp, battered, exposed skin. It feels like a caress of staggering, contrasting gentleness.

Night has fallen in a leaden, vicious grey. It smells of ashes and burning flesh. Stretched out on the unyielding ground, they are no longer touching and a silent emptiness is flooding Morinth's mind with the same pressure as the tide coming in. She senses Shepard by her side and through some fading thread of biotic power, she feels the steady beat of his heart as it finds its rhythm.

"Morinth," he says in a whisper.

There is only one regret left now.

"No, Shepard," she almost laughs. "Mirala."

Pale clouds are driven past the jagged, broken spires of a skeletal civilisation. A gust of wind tears open the clouds to reveal the clear night and the crescent of the moon and behind it, the glory of the milky way in perfect white on velvet.

Shepard says, "Eneas."

The firmament stretches out above them and she sees the myriad falling stars, tiny flickering lights going down in a firework of white and silver and gold as the fragments of the Reaper fleet scatter and burn in the skies above Earth.

* * *

**End of _Zero Hour_**

* * *

**References**:

'twisted rope' — an expression from "Captain Harlock: Endless Odyssey" for DNA

'Eneas' — Shepard's first name; a slightly less fancy spelling of 'Aeneas' (Trojan hero and ancestor of the mythical founders of Rome); the reason Shepard once referred to himself as "goddess-born"

_plenty_ of other callbacks to previous installments, I think none of them are essential, but hopefully entertaining to those who spot them

* * *

**Author's Note:** Is there _any_ word for 'cock' that does not completely ruin the prose? No? I thought so. Helps avoid the slippery slope into porn, though, so we are all better off for it...

Obviously, there is just no way this can be as good as I want it to be. It'll never be as good as I want it to be. It's an approximation, however, as close as I can make it.

I'm the first to admit that I may be fetishising Shepard's first name too much.

Although this _feels_ like the final installment, I'm not quite certain that is what it'll be. As a suggestion, maybe keep the story alerts.

**Feedback, as always, welcome!**


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